


A Tale of Plane and Scout; Like Touch, Like Fire and Ache.

by beauty_love_stardust



Category: Jumanji (1995), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Age Play, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Drama, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Angst and Romance, Angst and Tragedy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barebacking, Cheating, Comfort/Angst, Confusion, Consensual Underage Sex, Crying, Cutting, Drunk Sex, Drunken Kissing, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Infidelity, Emotional Porn, Emotional Sex, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Love, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden, Forbidden Love, Forehead Kisses, French Kissing, Grief Sex, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Guilty Pleasures, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Infidelity, Kissing, Love at First Sight, Lust, Mental Disintegration, Mental Instability, Pain, Painful Sex, Paternal Instinct, Please Don't Hate Me, Post-Canon, Post-Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romantic Soulmates, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Sex, Shame, Sleepy Kisses, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Survivor Guilt, Touch-Starved, Touching, Triggers, True Love, Underage Drinking, Underage Kissing, Underage Rape/Non-con, Underage Sex, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Vaginal Sex, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:14:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beauty_love_stardust/pseuds/beauty_love_stardust
Summary: How am I supposed to live like this ...? With Bethany under my skin ... embedded in my soul ...Alex had to live twenty-one years without the girl he loves. Now that she's here and now that she remembers him, it's a lot, almost too much, for him. Meanwhile, Bethany struggles with her own inferiority, her own secret shames.Warning: I didn't label all the triggers, but there are a great deal of them. So be warned going in.
Relationships: Alex Vreeke/Bethany Walker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	A Tale of Plane and Scout; Like Touch, Like Fire and Ache.

**Author's Note:**

> _I have been working on this fic for about two weeks, now. I was caught near the end, and have finally been able to complete it! It was never intended to be so long, but once I started writing it just kept going! There are quite a few triggers scattered here and thereabouts, so let this serve as a second warning to all readers! This will be riddled with angst and a wild rollercoaster ride for anyone that decides to take the plunge and read it! I have been wanting to write something for Bethany/Alex ever since I first saw them in the original movie, but its taken me a long time to actually sit down and do it. I hope you all enjoy this! For now, I am treating it as a one-shot fic. But I may add to it in the future if I ever feel the need. Let me know in the comments if you would like that, guys! I may venture back to these two, who knows?_

_**A Tale of Plane and Scout; Like Touch, Like Fire and Ache.** _

* * *

> _I acted like it wasn’t a_
> 
> _big deal, when really it_
> 
> _was breaking my_
> 
> **_heart …_ **
> 
> _it’s been so long since_
> 
> _this loneliness began_
> 
> _that I don’t remember_
> 
> _what it’s like to not feel_
> 
> **_broken_ ** _…_

* * *

_Alex_

Somewhere, in the constant disappointment that _was_ Jumanji, I’d lost all semblance of hope. Days became _weeks_ … weeks became months … months – _years_ …

But I never knew the full extent of the duration.

I’d come to the conclusion, soon after I’d landed in the thick of those sweeping jungles, with conglomerated underbrush and countless enemies, that I’d most likely die there.

Befall a similar fate to that of Alan Parrish, the man …? _Boy_ …? That had built the jungle fort I’d called home.

Certain _death_.

That is, until a long window of time transpired and my reflection in the watery stream hadn’t aged. Not so much as a day.

I’d realized then, I wouldn’t die of old age … I wouldn’t die if I were trapped for a _million_ years …

I’d just exist. In a body that wasn’t mine, in a time that was trapped forever in a state of unrest – in a _video game_.

Hope once again had been stolen from me.

The nights were countless, endless.

I remember the way I’d ached deep in my belly for the touch of a female’s delicate fingers. How I’d ached for **any** touch, come to that … physical contact that I’d taken for granted for sixteen years of my life, before I was sucked into that video game.

I’d missed even the simplest touch from my mom’s gentle hand. Or my dad’s claps on my shoulder or back.

I’d just missed feeling like I belonged, like I was **_alive_**.

I lost track of how many nights I pushed my hand down the waistband of my khaki pants and squeezed the base of my prick. Stroked and massaged the needy skin until it’d throbbed and leaked down my hand. Burst with an empty sensation into the crotch of my boxers and pants.

I’d cried out my mourning for a warm, feminine touch.

Anything … _anyone_ … to subside the ache in my heart and soul – literally **_anyone_**.

So, when I’d come face to face with other players, I’d gone along with it. Followed their lead and finished the game.

Thanks to the girl named Bethany for saving my meager life, who’s friends had assured me that I’d **_want_** her in real life …

I’d not told them, but the truth had been, that I’d wanted her in the game.

Even if she was an overweight, middle-aged _man_ – my heart had been inclined toward _hers_. Desperate as I was, from my inescapable loneliness spanning years and years with just the cusp of my hand to alleviate my ache, my heart’s inclinations had been out of the realm of my control.

I’d promised myself – it _wasn’t_ my fault.

But that I’d also fallen in **love** with her.

I’d decided there and then that I’d **_always_** be in love with her, so long as I lived.

Even though, when the game spat me back out, I was four years away from Bethany even being _born_. She hadn’t even existed in my reality, yet.

And that might have been the most _painful_ truth I’d had to face.

* * *

I’d spent my time returned from Jumanji, like a rebellious ghost.

I’d snorted cocaine, drank copious amounts of alcohol, and kissed and fucked my way through countless female’s at parties. They’d been nameless to me, then.

 _Faceless_.

They’d been the closest thing I could find to Bethany and I’d been so _ashamed_.

Ashamed because it was **_her_** touch, I craved … **_her_** deep warmth I wanted to be plunged into – _not **theirs**_.

My parents had asked me what was wrong. Why I’d become so troubled, practically overnight. Because to them – it _had_ been overnight. But for _me_ … it’d been endlessly long, since I’d seen them last. Twenty-one years was longer than I’d even been alive at that time.

I could never divulge the truth to them and I’d known that – I **_still_** do.

So, instead, I’d lied – said I was fine – and taken more girls my own age, to bed.

Bethany had told me she was _blond_ … and I wasn’t proud of it, but I’d primarily singled out gorgeous blonds to kiss and tear the clothes off of.

Before I’d been sealed into the video game, I’d always existed as a type A geek within school walls.

I’d primarily fit in with the outcast crowd, or probably not even been noticed at all, but with my return, I’d been far more athletically inclined.

Jumanji had forced me to hone my physical abilities – or _die_. So, in order to feed the surge of emotional turmoil I was spiraling in, I’d joined the football team.

My junior year I became popular virtually _overnight_. Suddenly, the eye of every girl and guy was trained on me – and even my parents had been impressed – despite my other troubling behaviors.

I’d reveled in the physicality of football. The contact I’d missed for so long in Jumanji, was finally available again – and I’d taken advantage.

I remember how _good_ it felt to be piled on by other rowdy boys on the field.

And off of it I’d sought out all those gorgeous cheerleader blonds, with a fervor.

 _Anything_ , so I didn’t have to think about Bethany’s lack of existence in my present.

I continued on that swirly path until high school ended and college began.

The drugs continued to be what allowed my guilt to ebb away (while I fucked my way through every party imaginable, at college, same as I had in high school) and also kept me present on the football field.

I remember how unfulfilled I felt, even when we won.

There was nothing worse than the sensation of loathing my own skin.

I woke up more mornings than I could have counted with pills and booze coming back up from the night before, and the want for Bethany strong inside of me.

I graduated college without a career goal in mind.

Four years and I had no idea what I planned to be for the remainder of my life.

I had returned to Brantford with the singular goal of staying in my parents’ house, hanging my certificate on the wall – and fucking around on _their_ dime.

It’d been six years since Jumanji and I _still_ hadn’t been able to forget about her – about **_Bethany_**.

But I’d looked up her parents in the phone book – _the_ _Walkers’_.

She was two years old at the time and I remember standing outside her house, half-hidden behind a tree, observing them playing with the sprightly two-year-old that was all smiles in their front yard.

In the back of my mind, I had known she was the girl that _would_ save my life.

I had known who she would become … and I’d also known that she’d have no _knowledge_ of me.

It was that moment when I knew I **_had_** to change.

When I saw her smiling and happy in her parents’ arms, while I was miserable and alone – _starved_ for touch.

I’d sworn off the drugs that night. Let my body adjust to the withdrawals and after days of sweating it out, I’d woken up to find that it was time to be something other than the man I currently was.

I’d been twenty-two years old and incomprehensively _alone_.

I had my parents but nothing else. No _one_ else.

So, I’d gone on the prowl for a job. I’d started out as a financial advisor. The hours were shit, but the pay wasn’t half bad and I’d always been good with my numbers.

My brain was analytical and I was just the person they’d been searching for at the time.

Years passed and I still couldn’t forget Bethany, still couldn’t put the blond bombshell from my mind. I’d pushed aside the _wants_ I harbored that told me to seek her out.

At the time she would have been _ten_ years old.

I’d spent years as an advisor and worked my way up to a full-scale manager. The pay was outrageous and the hours were long, so I didn’t have to think about how _alone_ I was … but it still came up sometimes.

And some nights (despite giving up the drugs) I drank a little too much whiskey in order to fall asleep.

And most shameful of all, I’d closed my eyes and tugged on myself until I spilled seed to the thoughts of Bethany.

Those nights … I always tried to forget by _doubling_ my alcohol intake – it **_never_** worked.

I’d still remember come morning when I poured myself extra caffeinated coffee and slinked off to work.

Everything changed one day, when I met Tiffany.

I don’t know what possessed me to ask the blond beauty with striking blue eyes out to dinner. I don’t even know why I jotted down her number and kept it.

I’d always had one-night-stands that were meaningless, prior to meeting her, but in that moment, perhaps I’d been inclined to find something more permanent, that didn’t bring me so much _shame_.

Or, maybe it was because my parents were on my case about providing them grand-kids one day … before they died … either way, I’d _kept_ the date.

I’d gone out with her, despite deep down, knowing I would always be striving to be with a girl that didn’t know me yet, possibly _never_ would.

I didn’t know how Jumanji worked. I’d pondered if she’d know me when she was old enough, or if everything had reset and spat me out where _I_ came from, while completely _erasing_ what happened to them.

There was no telling … and twenty-one years was a _long_ time to wait to find out …

I’d have **_waited_** for Bethany, though … had I known for _certain_ that she’d know me.

But fate had a different course planned out.

I didn’t climb into bed with Tiffany after our first date. She’d been quick and witty – _smart_ even. And I’d drank enough to charm her with my tenacity and remarks … and maybe I’d been too gentlemanly by insisting that I couldn’t come in when she’d asked, because the next date, she’d jumped my bones and I’d been drunk and careless with her body.

I’d thought about ending it after I’d slept with her. Same as I _always_ had before, I’d even gone weeks without calling her, but one of her phone calls had changed my life.

I’d gotten her _pregnant_.

My heart had sunk at the news. It was meant to be happy but it wasn’t …

 _Not expressly_.

Because, I had known what was expected of me, then.

Not just from my over-the-moon parents, but from her – **_Tiffany_**.

I’d gotten down on one knee soon after that and the rest was history.

I think I _might_ have loved her … for a _time_. Perhaps I’d even allowed her to claim a few pieces of my soul, but Bethany was _always_ there, between us like a festering wound that refused to heal. I’d even whispered to Tiffany one night that I’d been _saved_ once, by a girl named Bethany.

I don’t know what possessed me to tell that _small_ iota of truth.

I couldn’t reveal that I was really twenty-one years older than she believes I am, but I told her enough of the truth for her to understand that Bethany _is_ important.

Enough for her to allow me to name our _daughter_ after her.

It was painful to say Bethany’s name everyday at first. So painful, because I’d wished my children would be _hers_ … that we’d wind up _together_ in the end.

Somewhere along the way, I’d lost hope that Bethany _would_ remember me. At one point, around when Tiffany had our second child (another little girl, this one named Sarah) that I’d finally managed to think about her a little less.

I hadn’t forgotten her entirely, but it was enough to not think about her every night before I’d take my wife to bed.

Despite _all_ of that, we’d fallen into a dull routine. I’d head to work, come home late and consume enough alcohol to staunch any remaining thoughts of Bethany, before I sought out my wife.

I would come home and be met with the same disapproving look in Tiffany’s eyes, every time I popped open a bottle.

She’d accuse me of being too old to continue on this way and I’d try to block her out while I guzzled down another glass.

I couldn’t tell her it was the only way I could fathom _performing_ in our bedroom. I didn’t tell her that I never wanted to marry her in the first place … and I most definitely never told her that the little blond-haired four-year-old of ours, named Bethany with her perfectly blond strands of hair and oceanic blue eyes, made me think of the **_real_** Bethany I’d seen from afar as a toddler.

Because it wasn’t **_fair_**.

None of what I’d endured through these past twenty-one years had been fair.

I don’t know when the fights started, but they had been little at first. Just comments from her lips about tasting the whiskey on my breath. They’d escalated to shouts whenever my parents had the girls and it was just us, predominantly.

And sometimes, those fights would turn to her smashing things near my head, and end with her pushed into the couch and me driving into her with full force, because I wanted her to hurt at least _half_ as bad as I had been.

And I’m not proud of those fights, I’m not proud of the marriage I’ve sealed myself into.

For the first time, one of those nights, after we’d fallen asleep in a pile of limbs and parts on our couch, I’d realized that I was as much a prisoner in my life, as I’d been in the game – in **_Jumanji_**.

I’d fallen to sleep with tears stained on my cheeks.

That was the night, before it _all_ came apart at the head.

* * *

I’d driven over to my parents’ house early on Saturday, I’d wanted to spend the day with them and my two daughters. Most of all, I’d wanted to be _away_ from Tiffany.

We spent a couple hours at the park. The toddler had passed between our laps, while little Bethany had clamored all over the play escape.

I’d not spoken much during the trip, because I didn’t want the truth to come out to my parents. The truth being that I could never be truly happy with Tiffany. I’d always known it, but I stay for our children. Our daughters deserve to have two parents.

It wasn’t until the ride home when I saw them … the **_four_** of them.

Trekking down the street in a candid line, that I’d known … twenty-one years was that Saturday … **_that day_**.

And I remember how I rushed to greet them, still with my infant daughter tucked in her car-seat, in hand … and I’d felt my heart nearly compress in the concave of my chest.

Bethany had been before me, for the first time since she was two years old, as **_herself_**.

As the **_her_** , that had saved me … that had brought me back to life by giving me _one_ of her own.

She’d been more beautiful than I ever could have imagined. Strikingly gorgeous with her long, thin body, pert breasts, perfectly styled blond hair, and spritely blue eyes.

She was a far cry from the toddler I’d spied on all those years, before.

Her friends had been right … she **_was_** hot.

It had taken every ounce of my willpower not to draw her into my arms and steal a kiss right there. My body has hungered for her, for over twenty-one years by this point and I’d not known how to compose myself, in that moment.

I’d been so stunned by her sudden appearance – and the fact that she’d known me after-all, that I’d remained in a state of intrinsic shock.

She’d looked at me with an almost awkward smile, trying to contain the emotions she harbored for me, and taken our reality in stride.

I’d told her of the daughter I named for her and I’d seen the tears rimmed in her eyes.

Her reality was not what she’d hoped it would be (same as mine has always been) and I’d very much felt my age in her eyes.

Twenty-five _years_ difference.

I’m old enough to be her father with how time has passed for me.

I’d realized that – in the moment. And I’d felt shame and guilt broil inside of me with a forceful magnitude that I cannot quite forget.

I realized, that I’ve waited for her, for over half of my life (and more than _all_ of hers) and now that she’d been standing right in front of me, I could **_never_** have her.

I think something broke in me, then.

Reality had cracked in my mind and the weight of that truth had threatened to have me on my knees under the pressure of it.

Why hadn’t that occurred to me, even **_once_** , in all of these years?

Now, as I sit, four days later in the dark allure of a local bar, taking down my fifth dram of whiskey in the corner, I keep going over my life in my head.

I keep replaying the one-night-stands, the drugs, the booze, the parties, the loneliness, my unwanted marriage … my two beautiful daughters …

And I take another drink.

I want nothing more than to be able to erase it all. I want the guilt to go away … my guilt, for wanting a seventeen-year-old girl in my bed.

No one would have understood even had I waited for Bethany, without children, _without_ a wife … It wouldn’t have **_mattered_**.

No one would ever understand if I left my wife and took up with Bethany. Perhaps my wife would find the coincidence in her name, but she wouldn’t be able to logically put the pieces together, since I’d told her Bethany saved my life over the summer vacation when I was _sixteen_ years old.

Bethany hadn’t been **_born_** yet.

No, no one would ever come to the conclusion that Bethany of the _past_ – and Bethany of the _present_ – were _one_ _in the_ _same_.

I’d seen how she dismissed herself from my presence (they _all_ had) the awkwardness had been too much for them. Too much for **_me_** – and it’d shown.

Bethany is all I’ve been able to think about. She’d been on my mind the remainder of the weekend and all of yesterday and today at work.

It’s why I’m _here_ …

In this seedy, fucking bar, with only my thoughts for company.

It’s after eleven and I’m usually home by now, but I don’t want to go home and fuck my wife. That’s all it can be now; I can’t call it _love_ … because I can’t believe I ever actually **_loved_** Tiffany, _anymore_.

Bethany is the one that stole my heart – and she’ll have it until I **_die_**. Even if it makes no logical sense … Even if I’ve never understood it _myself_ … And even though I can _never_ have her, she’ll always have **_me_** … _always_.

* * *

_Bethany_

I can’t stop thinking about _him_.

 ** _Alex_**.

I saved him, selflessly. It’s the first unselfish thing I’ve done since I can remember and yet, I can’t help but think about how much I wish he’d been born in _my_ time.

When he’d been in Jumanji with me, he’d been sixteen years old. I’d been older than he was in there … but Jumanji was cruel, it’d spat him back out where he came from which meant he’s lived a whole _life_ without me in it.

I’d seen that in his eyes the other day.

I’d seen his maturity, but also the deflection in his gaze.

That’s what made me leave so soon after we met in the _now_. I keep thinking about how his eyes had scanned over my face, my body … my physique …

He’d taken me in with his eyes, but he’d kept me at arm-length.

He’d hugged _everyone_ else, but when it came to me, he’d barely pulled me in before he was backing away. His brief touch had been electric and I’d _wanted_ to kiss him … but I _hadn’t_.

I’d let him pull away and not spoken a word about it.

But it had _hurt_.

It had hurt more than I could ever hope to translate into words. It was just this deep punch in my chest … in my gut … and it has lodged a lump inside of me, that I can’t seem to make go away.

I’ve spent the past three nights wanting to call him. His cell number has burned a hole in my pocket ever since.

These past few days I’ve poured over his social media accounts. I have spied on his beautiful wife Tiffany Vreeke and their two daughters in pictures, that span the last six years or so.

I’ve seen his wedding day, his family vacations, his forced, lifeless smiles in all of them. I even noted that he works as a financial advisor, one of the hardest _imaginable_ jobs.

I have selfishly laid here every night and wished that he didn’t have a family. That he had _waited_ for me … that what I saw in his eyes wasn’t encroaching on disappointment and realization of how young I am, but _actual_ **_love_** … and joy at seeing me again.

It’s _pathetic_.

I know it is, because I could be with any guy my own age that I want, but I don’t want _any_ of those guys. Especially not guys like Brian Lewis that cheated on me with _multiple_ girls.

I **_want_** Alex.

Sweet, kind, charismatic, Alex, who was so vulnerable in Jumanji, but also strong and intelligent, like he must have always been outside of the game.

I know he’s pushing forty … and I know he could have been my father in another life, but I don’t care about any of that. I just want him to admit that _none_ of that matters. That it _shouldn’t_ matter, because love is **_love_** … and I saw a deep sadness in his eyes.

He’s not _happy_.

Not in any of his countless pictures online, and not when I saw him outside of his parents’ house.

That’s what has finally made me brave enough to push the call button next to Alex’s name.

I listen to it ring and ring and I wonder if he’ll _answer_ …

I wonder if he’ll even **_want_** to speak to me …

* * *

_Alex_

_I regret my entire life._

It’s what I think when Bethany’s name suddenly appears on my iPhone screen.

The picture of her smiling up at me, punctures my heart and I blink a couple of times, trying to steel myself against answering.

All I’ve wanted for years is to talk to Bethany … but now that I can, I just can’t … No, I **_can_** … I just … I **_shouldn’t_**.

I take a glance around the bar, then take a final swig, downing the rest of my whiskey and make a split-second decision to hit the answer button on my phone.

“You shouldn’t be calling me …” I realize I’m drunk because the words are slurred out in a ramble and I wonder if she can even understand me.

There is a long silence on the other end and I have to check to see if she’s hung up, before I press the phone back to my ear and she finally answers.

“I want to come and see you Alex …” she whispers and my stomach squeezes with yearning.

“ _Bethany_ —”

“Where are you right now?” she cuts me off.

I flitter my eyes around, my mind racing as I imagine that everyone in this bar is spying on me, waiting to report what I’m doing back to my wife. It’s absurd, but that’s how _guilty_ I feel.

Guilty of _wanting_ a teenage girl. Guilty of **_loving_** a teenage girl.

I release a raspy breath of air.

“Meet me at Brighton Park. Ten minutes …” I relent, then hang up, not waiting for her answer.

I throw down three twenties on the table and peel off from the bar. My car keys weigh down my pocket, but I know I’m too drunk to use them. So, I head to the park on foot.

For the entire walk my mind is racing. What am I doing? I know I can’t be anything more than a creepy dad-like figure to Bethany. I’m too old – she’s too **_young_** … It’s basic math.

And I’m not meant to be happy in this life.

Jumanji made sure that I’d never be happy, again.

I wish I never picked up that controller. I wish I never **_met_** Bethany … if I hadn’t then I wouldn’t be where I am right now. I wouldn’t be messed up and physically ruined.

I stop and linger near the edge of the bridge, where a stream of water is flowing underfoot. I ponder the stream rushing over the rocks below, while I wait for her.

She’s there minutes after me, and through the bleary haze of my drunk vision, I make out the pure beauty that simply is, Bethany.

She has no make-up on to speak of, and I realize how big of a deal that must be for someone like her. I didn’t understand when we were in Jumanji, but I do understand now, the references to her smart phone, the addiction to the _internet_ that almost _every_ American has now, but couldn’t have when I was a teenager.

The world has changed in the past twenty-one years. _I_ have changed …

But not so much as to not still have an unbearable hankering for Bethany.

That will _always_ be inside of me.

And I’m so _ashamed_ …

“What do you want from me, Bethany?” I slur, wanting to embrace her, but knowing better of it.

I see her eyes shift down to her feet. I watch as she proceeds to shift from foot to foot and pushes her hands into her skirt pockets, standing there with a softness to her that almost has her glowing. When she looks back up at me, I notice for the first time that she’s been crying.

There’s almost a red puffiness to her eyes and she’s not tried to conceal it with make-up … she’s not tried to hide **_anything_** from me.

And I feel my heart cinch. I feel like such an asshole, because I wonder if she’s been crying over me.

“I …” her voice trails off and she shakes her head, gives me one last glance, then rushes out the words, “This was a mistake, I shouldn’t have asked you here, I’m sorry …” and turns to walk away.

I waver for a moment. I _should_ let her run. I should pretend this hasn’t _happened_ and add it to the unending list of regrets that I have, but I **_can’t_** let her go. I won’t spend the night knowing that I made Bethany cry herself to sleep, because of me.

So, I reach out and grip her _bare_ upper-arm, turning her back to face me.

“You didn’t ask me here, I asked **_you_** here,” I correct, truthfully, trying to erase the curbed edge in my tone, but can’t quite do it.

I’m still so damned drunk, after all.

She stops and glances up at me, the frown still dominant on her lips.

She reaches up to wipe off a few of her tears, then moves away from my touch, as though I’ve burned her. And I lower my hand to my side as I try not to think about how touching her has burned **_me_** , too.

“You’re not _happy_ , Alex … are you?”

After a long winding silence between us, where neither of us say anything, those words threaten to shred me.

I wasn’t expecting such a bold choice of words. I wasn’t expecting her to notice the great unhappiness that is inside of me. Especially since everyone else has taken note of my fake smiles and believed them. It seems Bethany, hasn’t.

“What?” I breathe, still reeling from my shock.

Bethany shrugged then stared down at her feet, clearly uncomfortable, but still driven to continue.

“Your marriage … your _life_ … you’ve never **_looked_** happy … not in _any_ of your pictures.”

She calls me out on it. The lying. The pretensions.

And I still don’t know what to say.

“Bethany …” I trail off because how can I possibly answer that?

“You’re not,” she states it like a fact this time and comes closer to where I’m standing a few feet away, “are you?”

She is looking up at me with those hauntingly blue eyes and I see her through a layer of alcohol and regrets that I can’t ever seem to escape from. I want to kiss her … I want to take her back to my house and make her my own … I want so _many_ things that I just _can’t_ fucking have and it is making me insane.

I **_feel_** crazy.

She reaches up and her thumb grazes my cheek, while her other fingers plunge down across my jaw, over the coarse skin of my neck. I shudder under the feel of her touch. And I try not to react to it, but I shiver down my spine and feel the rousing of my manhood in the crotch of my trousers.

When I don’t respond verbally, she continues to talk instead. “I thought we had a connection in Jumanji … I fell in love with you, you know …” she admits, and I feel my heart still in my chest for a whole beat.

I’m frozen. Rigid. And I don’t know how to speak to her.

“Bethany … **_don’t_** …” I raise my hand and lower hers away.

This time, I’m the one that tries to walk away. But she stops me, with a hand to my shoulder that practically burns through my shirt and jacket.

She comes in close, close enough to whisper in my ear from behind.

“You don’t **_want_** me then …?” she whispers it like a statement, but it could have been a question.

All I know is that it makes me seethe with lust. It makes my belly broil into dangerous and vibrant emotion and the past twenty-one years of my life feel like a crushing weight that has become insurmountable to anything Bethany can fix in me …

I spin around and cup her cheek, before I push my mouth into hers. It isn’t graceful – and it’s not the way I imagined our first kiss would ever be, when I reappeared in 1996, twenty-one years ago, but its what I **_have_**. It’s what I’ve **_taken_** and claimed for my own.

I feel her lips soft and pliant against mine that are coarse and rough, like the rest of me. She’s so delicate, like a flower and I’m afraid I’ll break her. She’s half my size, I practically dwarf her and if I wanted to, I could have snapped her bones with just a forceful grip. It’s sick that I want her so deeply … so completely …

It’s not fair that Jumanji made me this way – made me **_want_** her.

When we finally break apart, I don’t know who was the one to pull back, but it _should_ have been me. Maybe its her though, I really can’t tell.

I keep my grasp hold of her cheek, because I need to be sure that she’s real. I need to know that she isn’t a drunken figment of my imagination … that after twenty-one years she’s finally here with me … **_knows_** me …

And I can **_feel_** her.

She’s warm and flushed with scarlet coloring across her cheeks. Her lips are swollen and red from the force of my kiss and the brush of my tongue. Her lips have been **_mine_** … I’ve claimed them.

I run my thumb across them to feel the wetness I’ve left behind. To know I’ve slaked at least a portion of my hunger for her lips on mine …

I’ve actually crossed the line now … I’ve _cheated_ on my wife. But Tiffany is the last thing on my mind right now. She’s hardly even a blip on my sonar.

“Want you …?” I breathe inches away from her lips, still disbelieving that she actually said that to me. I can’t believe she actually thinks all of my actions (or lack thereof) come down to not **_wanting_** her … not **_desiring_** her … I want to rage at her and let her open up my chest and see the goddamn scar she’s imprinted with her initials on my heart.

“You think I don’t **_want_** you?!” I’m talking louder than I mean … it must be the whiskey. It’s making me sloppier … less in control of my facilities, the longer its allowed to sink in.

“I spent twenty-one years in a fucking video game, **_alone_** … wanting every day for a touch that wasn’t my own … yearning … pleading for it … just a single iota of human contact … then you came along and you **_saved_** me! You saved me and I felt something for the first time in all those years … **_because_** of _you_!” I hissed through my teeth, pleading with my eyes for her to grasp the **_depths_** of my want, my **_need_**!

“Then, I come home from the game to find that you’re not even **_born_** yet …” I brush my hands through her hair, across her cheek, touch along her side … I’m touching her everywhere listening to her keen and whimper in her throat, “… you **_saved_** me … you made me **_love_** you … but I couldn’t have you when I came home … so I mourned you … I found a slake of my need with every imaginable blond there was … I did drugs … I drank until I passed out … I suffered … I **_still_** suffer … through every day of my life, waiting for you to come **_back_** to me …”

I hear her gasp as one of my hands graze up to cup one of her pert, underdeveloped breasts, fingering the nipple with the pad of my thumb.

“And now that you have … now that you’re **_back_** … I’ve mourned the memory of you for longer than you’ve **_lived_** on this Earth … I’ve aged and grown to over **_twice_** your age … I was twenty when you were born … I could be your **_father_** … I’ve fathered children … I _have_ a wife …” I groan at the thought of Tiffany, “She’d have me locked away if she **_ever_** finds out about what I’ve done … what I **_want_** with you, Bethany …”

Bethany is warm and real in my arms. It’s a shock to my system and I encase her in my embrace. I draw in close until she’s speared to my front and I make sure she can feel the press of me. Thick and bulged in my trousers against her belly. I want her to understand what just a **_kiss_** has done to me. Just her **_presence_** , actually …

She’s my singular wet dream.

She’s been my wet dream for twenty-one years and I’ve suffered with the proof of it, every single day of my life.

I want to be with her – that will _always_ be true.

There are tears in her eyes now, I can fell them when they begin to fall against my chest. They soak into my shirt and make me hot, all over. I keep my hold on her, but I wonder about the tears. Have I upset her? I shouldn’t have told her the truth, but I couldn’t help myself.

In that moment … when I’d heard her say I didn’t **_want_** her … something in me just broke apart … the monster in my belly had reared its ugly head and forced me out of control.

I reach up one of my hands and stroke the back of her hair. Fingering her slightly styled strands, subtly. I’m trying to soothe her. I realize its my parental instincts that have kicked in and I’m trying to calm her the same way I would **_little_** Bethany when she comes to me in tears.

I feel a stab of guilt pierce my stomach again and I try not to feel the full magnitude of it … but I do.

My soothing seems to help, though, because she draws back slightly, wiping a few of her tears away with her hands, smearing the liquid across her cheeks. I hiss because her movement dislodges her front from my tented-out erection and It feels sensitive.

“Oh, Alex … I can’t _imagine_ what you’ve gone through …” she breathes and I realize that’s something we can _both_ agree on.

She can’t. My pain is immeasurable to anything else. My thorough guilt is unmentionable.

“And neither one of us can turn _back_ the clock …” she whisks away a few additional tears from her angelic cheeks, “but I don’t see why we can’t **_try_** and be together … why we can’t _have_ this … this love that we _both_ want … that you’ve ached twenty-one **_years_** for …”

She creeps closer and I resist the urge to draw back, when she presses her slightly chilled hand over my chest. She has to peer up at me, I’m so much taller than her, in order to look me in the eye.

“Because I have a wife … and I’m too _old_ now … you deserve someone younger … someone that won’t go to **_jail_** if he touches you …” I admit with the largest ache in my chest that I’ve ever known.

I don’t want to keep pushing her away. I think it would kill me to watch her with another man, but this isn’t entirely about me. It needs to be about her, too. And I don’t want to imagine how bad things would be for her, if we _publicly_ dated.

If I ended my marriage and went out with Bethany in this tiny little town …

Bethany chocked back a sob and avoids my eyes. She shivers noticeably, her hands going up to rub along her arms. She only has on a short-sleeved shirt and the Fall air is starting to become chilly most days, in preparation for the coming Winter.

I hardly feel the cold anymore. I’ve spent so long as a hollowed-out shell, that I have decided the cold doesn’t bother me.

“Here …” I shed my jacket and drape it over her shoulders.

She gives me a thankful nod, while pushing her arms through the holes. I imagine it must be warm, from my body heat. I have a long-sleeved shirt on and I hardly notice the nippy cold that seeps through the fabric. I can only think about her.

She stands there, warming herself with the black leather for a few moments, not saying anything at first, but she’s still crying and its breaking my heart.

“So, that’s _it_ then?” she finally asks, “you’ll **_never_** be with me?”

I feel the stab in my chest and it crushes me, but I force myself to nod. I have to shut this down … now … before I do _more_ than simply steal a kiss …

“It’s going to hurt … but I don’t see that either of us have any other _choice_ , Beth,” I shorten her name, without asking her. But I see how it has this affect on her when I do. It makes her shiver again, but this time its not from the cold.

“I promise, I won’t be with anyone else, Alex. If you do this … if you _make_ me live the way you did for the last twenty-one years, then I want you to understand what it means … You’re hurting me the way _you_ were hurt … the way I **_never_** would have hurt you …” her words send fire through my insides. I can feel the span of it radiating inside of me.

I know what she means … If I never let my heart be claimed then she won’t either … And I want to retract what I’ve said, but there isn’t a way for me to do it now.

More tears fall freely down her cheeks, she’s not even bothering to try to rid herself of them anymore. I’ve exhausted her will, I can tell. And I’m not proud of it … not even remotely.

“You don’t _love_ your wife; I _know_ you don’t … why else would you be drunk at a bar instead of at home in **_her_** bed right now?” she accused and I know there isn’t any suitable answer to that question.

So, its my turn to look away … my turn to fall quiet.

“I’ve been _hurt_ , Alex. Too many times for me to tell you about. I know … I must appear _shallow_ and ditzy to a man like you, but I … I’ve used that persona as a way to _manage_ what I’ve been through.”

I can see something in her eyes … something almost dark and glossed over with tears and shadows … but it is gone quickly and I press with my eyes, but can find no sign of it, again.

“I shouldn’t have _come_ here, Alex …” She glances as me with this frightful look as though she realizes I’ve caught on to the glazed over expression from a moment ago and peered into something I shouldn’t have and seems to decide she has to leave in a hurry, “… You were _right_ … I’m just going to go. I _won’t_ call again … I’m sorry I tempted you … I’m sorry for **_all_** of it …”

I want to pull her back. I want to _kiss_ her again and tell her that even though everyday without her has hurt, I never would have given it up for the _world_. I want to tell her a lot of things, but I wind up standing with my mouth agape, as I watch her jaunt away.

* * *

_Bethany_

So, this is what it feels like to have your heart _ripped_ from its home.

I’ve never had my heart broken so brutally before.

I suppose when Brian Lewis cheated on me last year, that I’d probably never known what that felt like at all. I hadn’t loved Brian. I had never actually felt anything even close for Brian to what I feel for Alex.

I find myself storming away so resolutely that I don’t even realize his jacket is still hugging my freezing skin. Not even when I make it to my car and peel out of the parking lot … It’s not until I am home and settled on my bed, looking in my full-length mirror, right this instant, that I realize I still have the warm attire on.

I lower my head to the collar and realize it smells _strongly_ of Alex.

Like sweat, alcohol, cologne, and male musk … and something else that is _uniquely_ , Alex.

I feel the patter of my heartbeats and I sob until I can’t hear anything but the sound of my own self-hatred.

If I were _older_ , he’d want me. He’d leave his wife in a _second_ to be with me. He’d have done _more_ than kiss me outside tonight … and he wouldn’t have looked so broken.

So, filled with despair – _because_ _of_ **_me_**.

I take a moment to realize I’m doing it again. I’ve pushed my nails down hard into my upper-thighs and I can feel myself drawing blood with half-mooned crescents that now line the skin.

I have a great deal of scars on my upper-thighs. Some are made by my own hands and some aren’t. I’ve never told anyone about the ones that _aren’t_ from me. I realize in this moment that I almost **_told_** Alex … I almost made _such_ a mistake …

And it would have been … _a mistake_.

Because Alex can only see torment when he looks at me.

I _torture_ this man … this man that I _love_ , that I know **_loves_** me.

Age is just a number. It doesn’t speak to the soul that lives inside of **_me_** … of **_him_**. Because if it did, then it would be able to bridge the gap between us and society would accept what we feel as uncontrollable.

We were both sucked into a game, forced to play as avatars that weren’t our age, but our souls had been inside of those hollow shells. I’d seen into his soul, straight through ‘Seaplane’s’ eyes, and he’d seen into mine, straight through, ‘Oberon’s.’

If anything, being in Jumanji had proved that our bodies do not always reflect the souls that lay inside. My soul is not reflected in a blond-haired, blue-eyed female, but in my actions.

So why can’t I make him see **_me_** , now?

Now that we’re here … together?

He can’t understand how unhappy I’ve been … and for **_so_** long. I really don’t want him to understand, because I’d have to open myself up to him.

 _More_ than I already have.

I make my way under the covers and draw up my knees until I’m bunched in the fetal position.

I’ve always felt safest when I’m in this position. And I’ve always wanted someone to hold me … but just like always, there isn’t anyone here.

It’s just me.

And it always will be, **_just_** me.

* * *

I hear the fluttery chirp of birds in the air. Their twitters and trills have a smile curling onto my lips, despite my soured mood.

I know it’s pathetic, but I have yet to remove the coveted protection of Alex’s leather jacket.

I don’t want to lose the smell of him. It lingers on my skin almost like a promise and I want to keep him close to me for as long as I physically can.

If he will never allow for us to have each other, then I will cling to what I can have, for comfort.

I could use it as an excuse to see him, and that has crossed my mind, but then I’d have to return it … and I’d rather have this piece of him, than **_nothing_** at all.

Seeing him once, doesn’t compare to having him warm and against me, like a second _skin_.

If I close my eyes and imagine it, I can almost picture him, here with me. His lanky body tucked against mine, a lazy arm draped around my shoulder, and his musk and cologne thick in the fresh air, all around me.

Just the thought makes the space between my thighs tingly and wet.

I imagine Alex, the way he was last week. Passionate. Drunk. And practically bursting out of his slacks from _wanting_ me.

I squeeze my thighs subtly as I walk, trying not to _want_ him so badly, but knowing its no use. I’ve spent the morning with my newfound friends and they were oblivious to the fact that I wasn’t as talkative as I usually am. They were even more oblivious to the fact that I’ve got a man’s jacket covering my upper-half.

Honestly, Spencer spends most of his time, when he’s gathered with the rest of us, forcing his tongue down Martha’s throat, and Fridge is primarily so grossed out by their antics, that **_none_** of them really notice what I contribute.

Or my _lack_ of contribution for the last week, actually.

I’ve worn his jacket for a **_week_** … and none of them have _noticed_.

I’ve been surprised that Alex hasn’t returned for his jacket, and I’m beginning to think he doesn’t remember our conversation. He was fairly drunk that night. I suppose it would serve me right for what I tried to make him do.

Split up his family …

For **_me_** …

I sigh and step into my house, giving a general sweep in the living room and that’s when I lay eyes on him … **_HIM_** …

_My **worst** nightmare._

I can smell the rank stench of cigarettes in the living room air, when I walk from the foyer across the threshold into the living area.

My skin crawls with realization and my heart races a mile a minute, eyes blotting with tears.

“What are **_you_** doing here …?” I half-shriek out at him, a terrified look must be reflected in my blue eyes.

“Is that anyway to greet your old man?! Huh?” He’s unarguably drunk … at _two_ in the afternoon, possibly high too, and has a cigarette balanced between two fingers, lazily.

I haven’t seen my Dad in close to nine years. The last time, he’d stolen the family television, hawked it for drug money and Mom had kicked him out.

Mom doesn’t know our history; she just thinks he’s a deadbeat that we’re both better off without.

I inch back away, when he stands up. I want to cry – I want to throw things … but I’m too _startled_ to do more than gape.

“It is, considering all that you’ve done!” I snap, trying to sound less terrified than I actually am, and I don’t know how well it’s working.

I want to call Alex. He’s the first person I think about, then I remember that I don’t **_belong_** to Alex … He isn’t _here_ to protect me …

My dad laughs at that … as if I’ve said something amusing. What happened _wasn’t_ amusing … _none_ of it was.

“You always were an ungrateful little bitch, weren’t you? I suppose you get it from your, Ma,” his voice turns low and gravely as he gets up real close so that he can whisper in my ear, and my stomach tightens in knots.

I take a step away from him. He makes me feel like a little girl again … I’m _not_ a little girl anymore …

“Oh! There you are, Sweetheart!” My mom rounds the corner just in time to see my dad taking a step back, to offer her his most charming smile, behind another cigarette drag. She hasn’t however, witnessed the threatening way he spoke to me and it feels like old times.

Too **_much_** like old times.

“Mom, what is he doing here?!” I step away from him, in order to outright address her, and she whisks my concerned tone away with a bat of her hand.

“He’s just going to be staying with us for a few days. He’s been down on his luck, but he promises that this time he isn’t going to steal anything. He doesn’t need to, since I make more than enough to cover his debts and help him get back on his feet,” she sounded like a brainwashed imbecile. It’s been nine years, but even I can still remember the horror of living with him. I can feel it in my bones … and I can almost feel the residual ache from down between my thighs. All traces of arousal have dissipated.

“Mom, please tell me you don’t mean that! Please tell me this is just a joke … a prank …” but the odor of my dad is too foul to be a prank, and I can tell by his half-sinister smile that he has every intention of staying here.

 _With_ us.

“Don’t be so obstinate, Bethany. I know that having all this money like we do, that you’ve gotten a bit spoiled, but surely you can find it in your heart to welcome your own _father_ back into your life, he’s still a good man, he’s just made some mistakes,” I can’t believe she is defending him!

This **_monster_**!

I want to scream at her … I want to shout about what he’s done, but that would make it so much more real.

Realer than the crawling, scaly feeling of my skin.

I can feel his eyes on me and its such an unpleasant feeling. A feeling I haven’t known in _nine_ years …

“I … I’m going to my room …” I whisper to her and turn on my heel, before either of them can utter another word to me.

I take shelter behind my closed door and wish that I had a lock on it, desperately.

I’m trembling head to toe and I fumble in my pocket for my iPhone.

When I finally manage to yank it out, I’m dialing for Alex before I can stop myself. I hear the rings on the other end. I am frantic with the wondering about whether or not he is going to answer and then he **_does_**.

On what would probably have been the last ring, I hear his voice.

“I thought I made it _clear_ the other night, Bethany, we can’t **_do_** this. Okay?” He sounds mad. There’s a curbed edge to his voice and I can’t fight back the tears that clench my heart.

“Alex … Alex, **_Please_** …”

“I mean it, Bethany. I have to think of my _daughters_. I have to think about what this would **_do_** to them. It would **_destroy_** them. And I’m too old for you. Just don’t _call_ here … don’t call me **_again_** …”

I try again to get a word in edgewise, but then he’s hung up and the ache in my chest tightens.

The phone drops from my ear and lands on the sheets of my bed.

He was the _only_ thing I wanted. The only **_man_** I’ve ever loved … and my age _disgusts_ him … my skin … my body … I’m too **_young_** … I’m not **_good_** enough.

I want to scream and I want to throw things … but I _don’t_. I slide off the jacket he gave me and I drape it over the back of my desk chair.

I’m sobbing and shaking … and I honestly don’t know **_what_** to do. I can’t call my friends, because I don’t want them to _know_ what has been done to me in the past. I don’t want them to know what my mom has just let **_back_** into my life, with open arms.

And maybe she’s right – I’m **_selfish_** – because I don’t matter … to _anyone_. I’m never gonna matter at all.

I start to dig my nails into my thighs, because it’s the only thing that _helps_. It’s the only thing that can make the pain that’s splintering deep inside, even remotely abate.

I want the noise to stop. I want it to **_stop_**.

When my dad is around, I’m **_different_**. That’s always been true.

It was true nine years ago when I was _eight_ years old and made my first crescent-moon shapes into my thighs. It is true _now_ , when I realize my promise to Alex can **_never_** stand.

Because I **_won’t_** stay here … not while my _dad_ is here … and Alex won’t _help_ me.

He made it clear he wants no **_part_** of me. I understand … I _do_. I’ve caused him nothing but pain and detriment for twenty-one years – and it’s not _fair_. It’s not fair to ask him to give up his **_life_** for me. I’m not worth **_that_**.

I’m never gonna be **_worth_** all that.

I jump almost out of my skin, when I hear the door to my room open.

My dad’s dark-blue eyes that match my own, pair-off with mine.

I shrink back against the wall, when he steps into my bedroom, (which is supposed to be **_my_** sanctuary) letting the door slam behind him.

I’ve left my phone on my bed, even if I wanted to call for help, he would be on me, before I could so much as grab it.

“What are you _doing_ in here?! Get out of my room!” I shout at him, ready to scream for Mom, if I have to.

I can imagine my eyes are wild and I’m running out of options.

“Now, Bethany … I don’t think that tone is _appropriate_. You used to _like_ it when I was in your room … don’t you _remember_? Hm?” he insinuated such unspeakable things and I am genuinely speechless, because of what he’s said.

I swallow a thickness that has built in my throat and I count in my head as I try to imagine a way out of this mess. When I open them again, he’s right on top of me. His body is practically crushing mine to the wall.

“I’ll scream for Mom …” my voice is meek and mild.

I want to sound brave and unafraid, but I can’t. I’m crippled by fear. By emotion …

“Scream all you want, Darling, your mom had to head back to the office, it’s just us … and you have no idea how _long_ I’ve wanted it to be just us … How many times I envisioned myself coming back … _just_ for you … You’re such a **_vision_** now … so pretty with your blond hair and gorgeous eyes …” he smiled a twisted and sinister thing and I want to claw off my face.

Knowing that to him, I’m beautiful … **_desirable_** … It makes me sick.

 _Truly_.

I know he is telling the truth about Mom, because she often leaves for the office. Day and night. It’s how she was able to afford this expensive house. All of my expensive material possessions … She works for a prestigious law firm in the city. The downside being I rarely _ever_ see her.

“Please … Dad …” I force myself to squeak out the word, “Let me go …” I feel his hands on me. I feel his grip, can practically taste his breath and I want to vomit.

I want to be _sick_.

But instead I am made defenseless by him and I can’t force my body to move.

It’s like I’m that eight-year-old little girl again and I don’t know how to defend myself … I don’t know how to be anything but a victim to this man and his deviant acts.

I feel the grossness of my own skin and somewhere deep down I wonder if Alex could see **_this_** brokenness in me. Was it a factor into _why_ he won’t have me? Can he see the sins _painted_ like a portrait inside of me? On my skin? Over my heart?

Is that what makes me not good enough? Not incentive enough?

Not preferable to a loveless marriage?

“You always were cute when you begged …” he comments and I close my mouth. I won’t suffer the indignity of groveling to him.

Not _this_ time.

Before I can so much as flinch, he has me lifted off the floor and thrown down onto my bedsheets. I scramble for my phone, but he sees what I’m doing and gets there first, lifting my phone from my bed he throws it across the room and it lands, uselessly in the corner with a dull thud.

I can’t utilize it all the way over there. I can’t use Siri with my dad on top of me.

And even if I **_could_** , who would I call to come help? The cops? My _friends_? **_Alex_**?

I shudder when I think about Alex … his cold tone of voice just now. His words telling me to **_never_** contact him again …

Tears well up in my eyes and I sob as my dad slaps me across the face. It stings and I clutch my cheek. He seems to revel in my simpers of fear, because he draws me up and tears my shirt off my upper-half.

I sob and try to cover my breasts, but it’s no use. He’s shredded my bra and tattered my shirt.

And I’m tremoring so much underneath him, that my breasts are jiggling this way and that. He doesn’t linger on my breasts, he feasts his eyes on my skirt and shreds that, next.

I’m not **_little_** anymore, even though I feel like I am.

And I hear my father’s next words, shot down at me, pointedly.

“Your _rack_ is small, I expected better from my daughter, come _puberty_ …” he taunts me and I feel my belly wrench sickened by his words.

At the same time, I can’t help but wonder if I disappointed Alex … I remember how he’d touched my breast that night. How he’d fingered my nipple and kissed me like I **_mattered_**. Like I hung his moon. Was it all lies? Did he say those things to make me **_feel_** better about being rejected? Is every man just a _liar_?

My father used to compliment me. He used to hurt me _while_ he complimented me.

Now … now he isn’t complimenting me … he’s just **_hurting_** me … hurting to _hurt_ …

I want my brain to turn off. I want this trauma to leave me alone.

Why won’t it go away?! Why won’t **_he_** go away?!

I screech when I feel him ripping away my panties. I want to cover myself, but I can’t hide my breasts and my sex at the same time … I’m _useless_.

He never undressed me all the way before. It used to be touches … fingers where I didn’t want them. _Hands_ … _lips_ … _teeth_ … where I didn’t **_want_** them …

 _Cuts_ … _bruises_ … _aches_ … where I didn’t **_want_** them …

I realize far too late, what he has planned **_this_** time.

“NO! Please Daddy! I’m a _virgin_! Please don’t …” I’m starting to beg when one of his fingers starts plodding around down there. I draw my legs closed and try to fight. My instincts to keep myself pure … to keep any man from **ever** having me this way … kick in.

I promised, Alex that I’d _never_ be with anyone else … If I couldn’t have _him_ … there would be no one else …

What kind of _whore_ loses it to her own **_Daddy_**?

I’d never wanted to find that out.

Not since I was eight years old, had I **_ever_** wanted to find that out …

“Daddy! Daddy! Please!” I scratch at him, claw and kick out at him, desperately trying to dislodge him. But he is thick, pure muscle. And he’s heavy. He’s probably as tall as Alex, definitely as strong. And I never stood a chance. Not then … and not now.

He wrestles me down, punches and beats me until I can taste blood in my mouth and bruises have started to form on my face … across my bared skin … he drags me down into the filth and shit with him, the way he always has.

If Alex didn’t want me before … he’d **_never_** want me **_now_** …

I can feel so much pain under my skin … I feel so much ache in my heart …

And I want to _die_ , when I feel the throbbing length of him **_tear_** inside of me.

He doesn’t let me adjust, he just makes me _bleed_ and _hurt_. He makes me cry out for him and I know he’s done damage, and probably so does he, but he doesn’t care.

“You’re _my_ whore, now. Do you hear me? That’s all you’ve ever been _good_ for … God you feel so **_tight_** baby … so fucking tight … saving yourself for me … to be _my_ whore …” he rambles and I tune him out.

I shut my eyes and imagine _Alex_.

I imagine how gentle he might have been if he’d been my first. I imagine how his hot kisses would feel on my skin. I even think of _his_ little girl – **_his_** Bethany … and how he’d _never_ hurt her this way. My namesake will live _happily_ , with the man _I_ love. She’ll be loved and cherished by _Alex_ … but I am not good enough to be. Especially not _now_ …

Alex would despise me if he could see me for what I am.

I’ve portrayed myself as this innocent, ditzy, flower … but I’m not that … I was **_never_** that.

Daddy made sure of it …

“Daddy …” I whine out, reverting back to what I was before. The little girl that just wanted her father to love her **_properly_**. To not make her hurt when he touched her. To not make her want to scar her skin and make it ugly so he _wouldn’t_ touch it.

I’m **_her_** … I’m **_me_** … and my soul is **_still_** in this shell.

Even if my body isn’t proper … my mind is the same. My **_soul_** is the same …

Why couldn’t Alex _see_ my soul? Why couldn’t he latch on to it?

Did he really wait twenty-one years for me? Or does he just want me to **_believe_** that he has?

I cry out in pain, when Daddy pumps his hips, harder, drawing more blood and marking my skin as his. He kisses hickeys into my shoulders, makes artwork out of every bit of me he can … and I lay here and I take it, because I can’t fight anymore.

He’s beaten that out of me.

I just can’t do it anymore …

Mom let him do this to me. She let him **_in_** …

I make a sound in my throat when I hear him grunt and I feel his seed pulsing into me. And its all I can do to lay there and let him take his pleasure. I don’t think about the consequences, because there aren’t going to **_be_** any.

He **_killed_** whatever was left of me.

Alex did first, when he threw me away like I was _garbage_ … and Daddy just killed what Alex _hadn’t_ , by stealing away the _one_ thing I was proud to have … my **_purity_**.

I feel him pull off of me and wet my previously clean sheets with his disgusting seed. The same seed that _created_ me … I try not to think about that … because everyone would just be better off if I hadn’t _existed_.

Alex wouldn’t have hurt all these years (if he really _was_ hurting) and Daddy wouldn’t have broken me. Mom wouldn’t have felt obligated to choose me over work and lose clients sometimes, because of it, and I wouldn’t feel like **_this_**.

I wouldn’t have to feel anything at all.

I can feel his eyes on me, but its not like it matters. I have no reason left to defend myself. I wince when I see him pluck out his pocketknife.

I know what he intends to do with it – and I let him – same as I always did.

He carves little slits into my thighs, takes sick pleasure in it. I can hear him chuckling and I shudder as I feel myself bleed. He carves into my belly, my abdomen, little teensy cuts. Not enough to kill, but enough to let me be clear about what he’s capable of – enough to **_maim_**.

He speaks up now, and kisses my cheek, “Don’t you go forgetting _who_ you belong to, you hear? And give my best to your, Ma … turns out I don’t _need_ to stay after all … I got what I _came_ for,” he taunts and I let the tracks of my tears run down my cheeks.

I lay for an indiscernible amount of time on my bed-sheets. I listen to the dying down of the chirping birds outside, the same ones that game me hope just over an hour ago. The outside light dims slightly, by the time I finally can bring myself to move.

It’s **_so_** painful.

I’m hurting **_so_** much …

I clench my eyes shut and try to breathe through my mouth. I feel the way my air clogs in my throat and I cough and choke on the taste of my own blood from cuts in my mouth, caused by his fists.

I stare over at my own reflection in the mirror and I blanch. My ivory skin is littered in bruises and scabbed-over cuts. I’m hideous. My eye is bruised black and my jaw, too.

I stand up and feel the struggle of it in every muscle and bone in my body. Especially between my thighs … I stick my hand down there and find I’m coated in blood.

I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m sick into the toilet bowl. And I heave and heave until I have nothing left inside of me to give.

Wiping my mouth, I flush the toilet and go stand in front of the sink. I can’t believe the sight of me up close … I can’t believe that I look like something out of my worst nightmare.

I just know that in my heart, I want to never feel again.

I want this to be the last bad thing to ever happen to me. And I need to say goodbye … Alex deserves to know why I couldn’t keep my promise. My promise to live and never be with anyone else. I owe him that much …

I lower my aching, decrepit bundle of bruises onto the bed. I can’t think of myself as having skin, nor a body … not anymore.

That luxury was taken from me. My heart … my **_soul_** feels detached from this disgusting husk.

I compose a letter. It isn’t fancy … I don’t even know if its legible, I cried my way through it, but I seal it into an envelope and I scrawl his name on the front. Simple. Easy.

It’s the **_only_** easy part of this whole day.

I head over to my closet with all the strength I can muster and I struggle into a pair of jeans. I almost hit the roof when the denim touches my swollen cunt, but I don’t have a choice … My father damaged me too severely to head out, uncovered.

I pull on a long-sleeved shirt and lastly, I don Alex’s leather jacket, before I decide to tackle my facial bruises with cover-up.

I do the best I can to cover up the forming bruises on my left eye and across my jaw. I decide it’s not perfect, but it’s enough to not have anyone ask me questions and I prepare myself, because I know it’s going to be difficult to make it there.

But I am determined to make sure he receives this letter. Even if he doesn’t care to hear from me again. Even if he probably wouldn’t accept my call, I can at least give him **_this_**. It’s something he can have … it’s what is _left_ of my soul.

He can tear it up or keep it and I’ve told him as much within the contents.

Perhaps a small part of me wishes that he’ll choose to **_keep_** it. That he’ll carry me in his heart … but I’m making this _easy_. Because he _deserves_ easy. He would never contemplate leaving his wife for **_anyone_** else.

He basically told me that, last week. So, I owe him this.

I owe him his **_freedom_**. Freedom from the burden of choosing between me and his daughters. Because I want him to know he doesn’t owe me a life. I _have_ no life. Not anymore. My father made **_sure_** of that.

I manage somehow to walk all the way to his house. It takes twenty minutes, which is longer than it should be and when I finally make it to his sidewalk, I see his mailbox at the end of his sidewalk. And I head over to it. I start to open it with a creak and halt in my tracks.

I see my namesake, peering at me from just up the driveway. Her wide, blue eyes are trained curiously on me. She’s beautiful … healthy … and she looks happy … she’s everything that I can never be.

I want to talk to her. I want to tell her that she’s named for me, but I don’t. I slip my letter into the mailbox and I put a finger to my lips, to tell her to keep this between us.

She cranes her head to the side and I smile at her. I don’t feel much like smiling, but I do, for **_her_**.

And I walk away, leaving her staring after me, with a cant to her head.

* * *

I made it home somehow, and I’ve stripped myself of every bit of scratchy clothing, except for Alex’s jacket. I want it with me.

I want to feel like his arms are around me when I finally succumb.

I don’t know how _long_ it will take … I imagine it won’t take long.

When I made it home, I raided Mom’s medicine cabinet. She has sleeping pills left over from when she used to take them. She’s probably forgotten they exist, but I haven’t. I took one, once. When I was most desperate to sleep, because my dreams had been of the past – of father.

The pill had worked like a charm and I’d fallen into a dreamless slumber.

This time, I drank them all down, one by one, I can feel the mixture of pills and water, settling in my stomach.

I close my eyes because I want it to happen faster. I want to be numb, so I don’t have to feel all of this excruciating pain my father left me with.

Vile, monstrous, evil … that’s what I should call him.

He’s not like, **_my_** Alex would be. Except Alex **_isn’t_** mine. He doesn’t want to be and I don’t want him to **_choose_** me.

I **_don’t_**.

It’s too selfish to choose me when he has little Bethany and her sister.

I feel the numbness starting … in my toes … in my head … all over …

I’m fuzzy and my thoughts are fleeting. I take a whiff of Alex on his jacket and I let out a moan and start to cry.

I cry silent tears that roll down my cheeks and fill me with sadness, as I mourn the fact that my soul wasn’t born quick enough, to be Alex’s. I wish I’d been there to keep him from misery. I wish that more than anything …

And I mourn the life we might have known, if my father hadn’t made me **_untouchable_**.

* * *

_Alex_

There was a week of radio silence from Bethany. An entire week of me wondering about her, drinking myself into oblivion, and hating my thoughts for wandering to her.

Last night, my mind wandered when I was on top of my wife. **_Inside_** of her … and for a nanosecond, I’d seen Bethany under me. So young … with translucent skin, and a radiant smile.

I’d wanted to go to her … I’d wanted to kiss her and **_take_** her … the same way that I’d wanted last week …

It’s the most selfish want in the whole world. To be with this teenage girl that I can never have …

I’ve decided that if I have broken her heart … that if I’ve broken **_both_** of our hearts to smithereens than I have to stick by that decision.

I can’t waver and I can _never_ see her again.

Because if I see her, day after day, then I will crack and fracture until I’m bound to her like a leech to a leg. And I will wind up taking her to bed … and there is no going back from that.

Kisses can be explained away … I can convince myself that they can … but never a night with her.

If I give her that, then I must devote the _rest_ of me to Bethany in totality.

I’ve spent the past week with my children and Tiffany, I’ve really taken a look at the life that I’ve stumbled into by carelessness and stupidity. But despite this never being what I wanted, I’ve looked into the eyes of my children and I’ve seen how happy they are. Especially, little Bethany, and I’ve wondered what kind of father I’d be … what they’d **_think_** of me … if I walked out on them and their _Mom_.

If I just up and shacked up with a seventeen-year-old girl.

None of them would ever be able to understand. Even if I waited until Bethany is legal, it would still be certifiably asinine to my wife and daughters, because they could never understand my _love_ for Bethany.

They can’t understand how long I’ve **_burned_** for her.

So, I’ve made up my mind …

That’s _that_ …

So, when she had called out of the blue, after my mind was made up, I’d done the best thing I could think to do in the moment, I’d told her not to call me again and hung up.

I can’t have her dependent on me, no matter the situation.

I just **_can’t_**.

Because if she believes she can call me when she needs protecting, or just wants someone to be there, then it will venture into far more dangerous territory and once in a while, will turn into **_every_** day … and eventually I’ll _cave_.

Because I know my willpower and it _isn’t_ very strong.

Not when I’ve spent over half my life, **_wanting_** her.

However, after I hung up – up until now – I can’t stop thinking about _why_ she’d been upset.

I can still hear the chill of **_terror_** in her voice … and I wonder if I should have hung up _after all_.

What _was_ the emergency? What had made her call after a solid **_week_** of not calling?

I thought it might have been about my leather jacket at first.

The jacket is one I’ve had – _ironically_ – since high school. My senior year to be exact. It was something I purchased for myself, with my babysitting money. I had wanted something that was just mine – something that I _earned_ – and I didn’t tell Bethany (like I should have) when I draped it over her shoulders, but I bought it back then, because one day I’d planned on giving it _to_ her.

When we met again, I’d _always_ planned for it to be under friendlier circumstances. And I’d wanted her to have the first thing I ever bought myself, from when I was **_her_** age.

It was _silly_ – stupid even – but I found myself relieved when she **_didn’t_** call to bring it back. Because that means my jacket is **_with_** her, where I’d always _meant_ it to be.

But she hadn’t even mentioned the jacket … not that I let her get a word in edgewise, so I can’t help but wonder, what she’d been calling about.

I don’t have much time to ponder, however, because little Bethany has wandered in from the outside and she has a frown written on her face.

It’s rare when my daughter frowns, she’s always been such a happy little girl. I open my arms, and she runs at a sprint into my lap, sitting up on my knee, with that same sordid look on her face.

“What’s the matter, Pumpkin?” I ask her, gently.

Tiffany is down in the basement, doing her afternoon workout and it’s my job to keep an eye on the girls right now. Sarah is down for her nap and Bethany was playing just outside where I was supposed to be keeping an eye on her, but I admit … I’ve been distracted …

“Not suppos’d ta say …” she says, candidly and I crop up one of my eyebrows.

“Oh? And why _aren’t_ you supposed to say, Sweetheart?” I coax, rubbing my hand along her back.

She shrugs at this, and crinkles up the corner of her mouth.

“I dunno, Daddy … it’s a secwet,” she says in a hushed tone, then peeks around as though she expects someone to be watching us.

I feel chills starting now, and I wonder if someone hurt her while she was out there … if someone laid hands on her and I didn’t notice, Tiffany would never forgive me … I’d never forgive **_myself_** …

“Did someone hurt you, Honey?” I croon.

She immediately shakes her head ‘ _no’_ then stares out the front window.

“There wus a gurl …” she finally admits to me and I proceed to rub her back, in soothing circles.

“A girl? And what was this girl doing?” I ask, hesitantly.

“Stuck sumfin in the mailbox …” she responded in a sing-song voice, “then di’ this …” she lifted her finger to her lips and made a ‘ _shh’_ noise, “an’ she wus hur’t real bad, Daddy … walkin’ funny …”

I felt my stomach plunge with dread and I stood up, and lowered her down to the floor.

“I’ll be right back, okay Honey? Don’t move, just stay here, can you do that?” I ask her, though I’m already half out the door.

She shrugs again, then gives me a nod of her head. I sprint to the mailbox, gather the mail and charge back into the house. I recognize my name scrawled onto an envelope without a postage stamp … no return address and I _know_ who left it.

Even though I’ve never seen her handwriting – I just **_know_**.

I tear open the top and discard the rest of the stack onto the kitchen table, as I hurry to read what she’s written:

_Alex,_

_You can either throw this away or keep it, I don’t care either way._

_I just think you deserve to know why I can’t keep the promises I made you._

_I promised you that I’d live, and that even if it hurt, I’d keep living and that I_

_wouldn’t ever be with anyone else. Well, I’m afraid I have to break those_

_two promises, that I made, because I can’t do this anymore, Alex. I_

_can’t pretend I’m okay this time. But it’s not you, I want you to know_

_that. You didn’t cause this. You deserve to be free. Free to live your_

_life without regrets and me lingering over your head. You deserve to_

_be able to raise little Bethany and Sarah with their mother. And I want_

_that. I want you to do that, okay? I don’t want you to be sad for me._

_Because you can’t kill what’s already dead. You don’t owe me a life,_

_Alex. Because I don’t have one to save, not anymore. I wished I was_

_born sooner, Alex. I wished I was born when you were born and that_

_we could have met and loved normally. I know in Jumanji that you_

_saw my soul, even when I was inside of an avatar, because I saw_

_and felt yours. I had just wished that I had been old enough for you,_

_and that you could still see my soul hadn’t changed, just as I saw that_

_yours hadn’t. But I don’t wish Alex, not anymore. Now all I can think_

_about is making the pain stop. And that’s all there is now, Alex, pain._

_It’s like I’m in an avatar … like the one in Jumanji and I want to go_

_back home. I want to be in my home … maybe when you join me,_

_someday, when little Bethany is grown with kids and you’re a_

_Grandpa, content and ready, you’ll follow behind me. Maybe in_

_that place it won’t be sinful for you to love me. No one will have to_

_understand, because it will just be our souls. It will just be our_

_essences. I’m sorry I’ve made this letter longer than I intended. I_

_meant to make it simple and easy. I know you said never to_

_contact you again, but I had to break that rule, too. Because_

_I thought you’d want me to. I’m sorry if you’d rather I hadn’t._

_I’m just sorry, Alex. For everything I’ve done to you. And for the_

_pain I’ve caused you. I’m just so sorry._

_Bethany_

My heart stops halfway through and as I power-read through the rest, I can hear the blood in my head, pounding in my ears to make up for it.

The words are smudged with her tears, but I manage to read it all. And by the end I’m openly crying down my face.

What happened to her? What happened that was **_so_** bad … why didn’t I just stay on the phone? She’d _begged_ me … she’d **_pleaded_** with me and I’d been cold … and so _cruel_ …

I can’t think about that right now, because I don’t know how long its been since Bethany left this.

How long did it take my daughter to come in the house and tell me, after she left?

I feel panic rising in my chest and I stash the letter in my pocket, hurry to the door, and grab my keys from the hanger next to it along with my coat from the closet.

I remember through my panic, that my daughter is still standing in the living room. Right where I told her to wait for me, with a curious expression on her face.

“Go downstairs, and tell your mom that I had a work emergency and that I don’t know when I will be home, okay? Can you do that for me?” I ask her.

She appears worried but nods, scampering off to do as I’ve told her.

I don’t stay to find out what my wife’s reaction will be. I’ve never abandoned her in the middle of the day before. Not especially under the guise of work, when I’m supposed to be off.

But I couldn’t come up with a better lie under the circumstances.

I fumble for my keys at my car, opening the door, in order to finally climb in and speed away. I rip down streets like a man possessed. Straight through stop signs and narrowly miss a collision or two.

I need to get to her. I don’t care if I make it there in one piece, at this point, I don’t really deserve to.

I mentally scream at myself for my own stupidity. I’ve waited so long for Bethany … what was I thinking, casting her aside?

I see myself for the asshole I was to her now, and I don’t feel good about it.

If anything has happened to her … if I’m too **_late_** … I’m never going to forgive myself for it.

I barely remember to pull my keys from the ignition when I climb out of my car, and storm up her front sidewalk. I try the front door and find it isn’t locked.

I thank God for whatever mercy he shows me and I slam the door and charge up the stairs. I’ve never been in her house, but I know all the bedrooms in this neighborhood are built upstairs.

It’s a _given_.

I search each room frantically, until I find her, curled up in the fetal position on what must be her own mattress in her bedroom, and my heart drops into my stomach with what I’ve found.

I don’t think, I just stumble over my own feet to make it over to her bedside, kneeling down on top, I pull her head into my lap. My mind it trying to process what I’m seeing.

I’m trying to understand who could have done this to her … what kind of perverse **_monster_** did this to her?

Bethany isn’t wearing any clothes, except for **_my_** jacket. It’s all she has on … Her legs are bruised, I can see from the new angle I’ve positioned her in that she’s got bruises all across her middle, neck, chest, face … She’s covered those on her face with make-up, but her tears have washed some of that make-up away …

And my stomach lurches. I want to be sick, but I don’t _have_ that luxury.

She’s unconscious … but she’s **_breathing_**.

I search for what she’s done to herself … and I find an empty pill bottle right next to her pillow.

I scan over it and realize what I have to do.

An ambulance might not be able to make it on time, and I won’t _let_ them take her away from me … I am never going to let **_anyone_** take her away from me, again. And if I call them, they’ll commit her, for sure.

I hoist her into my arms and carry her all the way to the bathroom, planting her down in front of the toilet I shove my fingers down her throat. She immediately begins to gag and eventually, the pills come up and out of her system. I keep repeating the motion, forcing her to throw up the pills, repeatedly, until nothing more comes up.

She’s awake by this point, sobbing and choking for minutes after I am finished, but she’s alive … she’s conscious again and alive … I’m **_not_** too late ...

I can feel the letter she wrote me burning a hole in my pocket and I remember that she wrote that I don’t **_owe_** her a debt, but I **_do_**. I owe her **_my_** life. I owe her everything. And I should have come when she called me. I should have listened instead of telling her to leave me alone. Because if I’d have listened, I might have spared her this.

So, she lied when she told me this … whatever **_this_** is … isn’t my fault.

It **_is_** my fault.

It’s **_entirely_** _my_ fault … and whatever happened to her after I hung up – is my responsibility.

She leans into me and sobs against my chest. She starts to speak, and its muffled but I can make some of it out.

“I t-told you n-not to c-come … w-why did you _come_ …? W-Why did y-you s-save me?”

I pat her back and run my fingers through her hair.

Under any other circumstances the nakedness of her body might have excited me … I might have been unable to handle it, but right now, my mind is so charged with panicky fear that I can only think about what happened to her.

Who has **_beaten_** her? Who has made her want to **_die_** so badly? Who **_ruined_** her?

My next mission is going to be to kill them.

I don’t care who it was, I’ll make them _suffer_ for it.

“I know … I _know_ you did,” I whisper into her ear, “but I can’t let you _die_ … Bethany … It’s selfish but I _can’t_ lose you again … I was wrong to yell at you … wrong to hang up … forgive me Beth … _forgive_ _me_ … even though I don’t _deserve_ it …”

I stroke her hair, rub her back and she trembles and shakes in my arms.

I hear her teeth chatter and her heart pound. I kiss at the nape of her neck and I brush my nose against her ear.

Anything to comfort her. Anything to take the pain she feels and make it better.

“D-Don’t leave me, A-Alex … p-please … don’t l-leave me again …” she pleads into my neck and I know she probably isn’t all there, still.

I know, because a minute ago she was chiding me for coming …

“Shh, Baby … I’m here … I won’t leave you, again … I **_promise_** … I’m right here …” I know she needs her rest. What’s been _done_ to her … it must have taken its toll. And she must be exhausted.

Somehow, that registers in all of my fucked-up thoughts.

“Alex … S-Stay …” she whines, “h-he’ll c-come back ... and h-hurt me a-again … y-you shouldn’t have s-saved me …” her voice is meager, but I hear her every word.

I feel a surge of hatred in my belly at the thought of some man with his hands on her skin. Some man killing the spark that lived in her innocent eyes.

I need to clean her up.

I need to make this **_better_** , somehow.

I also need to know the extent of her wounds; I need to know what exactly transpired before she left me _that_ note …

“Shh, I’m not gonna go anywhere, Beth. You’re safe … I won’t let _anyone_ hurt you … **_never_** again …” I promise her, instantly, even if I don’t know who I’m up against, that doesn’t matter. I will **_break_** every single one of that man’s fingers if he so much as _breathes_ near my Bethany, again.

Teenage boy … **_man_** … I’ll kill _whomever_ he is …

I hoist her up from the bathroom floor and carry her into the shower.

“Can you **_stand_**?” I whisper with a coo into her ear.

She makes a simpering noise in her throat and does as I’ve asked. She stands on wobbly legs that barely keep her upright, so I lean her against the wall.

She’s clutching my jacket to her chest, covering her decency like her life absolutely depends upon it and I have to ready myself for what I have to ask her next.

“I need to clean you up … and the jacket needs to come off …” I see her eyes widen, frightful like I’d asked her to grant me the unthinkable and her head shakes, potently.

“P-Please … I d-don’t _want_ you to s-see …”

My heart stabs with another ache and I don’t state the obvious that I’ve **_already_** seen at least a portion of what lays concealed under my jacket. I let her believe her decency has been _spared_ – at least in front of me – for _now_.

I answer instead, “I have to, the leather will ruin under the water stream, I’ll let you put it back on, once I’ve finished,” I reassure her.

She eyes me apprehensively, then finally concedes.

I sigh my relief and help rid her of the jacket. Once it’s fully removed, I try not to gag at the explicit extent of her injuries.

I toss my jacket away, letting it land on the floor, near the toilet and turn back to face her, with a wounded expression in my eyes.

She immediately covers her breasts and clenches her jaw. I can see the muscle working, steeling her against saying anything, for now.

“Beth … Who _did_ this to you?” I ask in a forcibly restrained tone, praying she will answer me.

She turns her eyes away and staunches her tears.

I sigh and begin to undress myself. First my shirt, then the rest of my articles of clothing. I want her to know that I’m not ashamed to let her see _me_. Things will never go back to the way they were last week … in the park.

I’m going to take care of her now, that way I _should_ have, _then_. I want her to _see_ that – **_understand_** it.

She closes her eyes and flinches away when I reach for her.

It’s a bodily reaction, almost rudimentary, but it still hurts to see her so damaged that even my touch is one she fears.

I suppose I’m a stranger to her, in many ways. We met in Jumanji – we connected on a level that only the pair of us can attest to – and I don’t even understand it _myself_ , but I feel like I’ve always known her.

I realize, though, that she hasn’t had years to yearn for me, the way I have for her. And if the note she’s written is anything to go off of, someone has completely decimated her psyche. In her mind someone has ripped apart her body and left her soul to cling to her broken skin.

How am I going to **_fix_** that?

I can try to help bridge the gap between her body and the damage inflicted, but I don’t know if I can restore her mind to its rightful state.

I realize a shower is going to be too much for her to handle, so instead, I lean down and plug the drain, turning on the water, letting it pour into the tub and rise at our feet.

She stands, trembling and whimpering, keeping herself covered while spaced away from me as widely as the tub will allow.

I try not to look at her below the neck, but I find I can’t help myself. I survey her skin with my eyes and see so many brutal cuts. Marks that were clearly carved into her by the blade of a knife. I can’t trace the bruises – there are far too _many_ of them.

I understand why she wrote that she **_only_** feels pain – it’s so apparently written into her pale skin.

“I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” I feel I need to ask her, even though I hope she knows that I’d never cause her physical harm.

Bethany trains her eyes on me, but doesn’t say anything. She just gives me this haunted stare that creeps and sinks down into my bones.

I reach out and hoist her, bridal style, into my arms and lower the both of us into the hot bath water. She shivers against my chest and curls her head down into it.

With easing touches, I spread her legs and let them fall on either side of my waist, so that she is now straddling me. Her breath catches in tiny hitches that make my heart bleed for her and I wish there is something I can do, to take her pain on myself. If I could – I **_would_**.

She jumps a mile when her lower-half accidentally brushes against my manhood. I see the split-second of pure fight or flight instinct in her blue eyes and she cringes back and slides a few inches down my thighs avoiding the offending part of me.

“Bethany …” I whisper and reach up to cup at her cheeks.

She takes a couple of shaky breaths before she will even entertain the idea of looking me in the eye.

“Beth … You’re safe now … I’m going to clean you but I won’t … the last thing on my mind is … is **_that_** … okay?” I am trying to be delicate. I don’t want to spook her anymore than she clearly already has been.

This isn’t the _same_ girl that I met at the park last week. No. That girl is gone and that is my fault.

I will _always_ be sorry for this.

I’m never going to ignore another call for help. Never again.

I just hope I’m not too late to salvage some part of Bethany. She has to still be in there … I won’t give up until I **_find_** her.

* * *

_Bethany_

It had been warm and dark. A white light had engulfed me and I felt like I was floating. I believed that I would finally be able to lift up and away from here.

This place is _toxic_ … this place is **_death_**.

It’s cruel and punishing and I just want to be _far_ away from here …

But _something_ pulled me back. Something gripped me tight in the unending labyrinth of pure nothingness and wrenched me **_back_** into the _pain_ … _death_ … **_agony_** …

I could feel the pills … the water … as they were forced up my throat. I can still feel my throat is sore from his fingers down the back of it.

I retched for a good long time, even after he’d _stopped_ forcing me.

I heard the flush of the toilet and I felt him lifting me again.

Time elapsed, passed … and now I’m spread for him – around him and I can feel the soft fleshy piece of him that makes him a **_man_**.

The piece that I wanted to be the _first_ to touch my inner-walls …

Just the reminder that Alex was a flesh, blood man was enough to shock my system and make me remember my intentions … why I took all those pills in the _first_ place!

And I wish I hadn’t taken him that letter. I wish with all my heart, that he _wasn’t_ seeing me like this. Seeing me like a broken-down harlot without her faculties, because that is what I _am_.

I’m splintered and disgusting.

 ** _Untouchable_** …

So _why_ is he touching me? Why is he trying to _help_ me? I told him there isn’t _anything_ worth saving and I meant that.

I meant it with every facet of my being.

I shiver with the top half of my body sticking out of the hot bathwater and I glance within his eyes, wishing I could make him understand what he’s doing to me.

My father wrenched me open and stole all the juiciest bits for himself. He took my dignity, pride, my will to exist …

I wanted, Alex … I _did_ … I **_still_** do, deep down …

Just not like _this_ …

Not when I look and feel like this.

Alex has these sad eyes trained on me and I want to tell him that he shouldn’t cry for me, but I can tell he has – and that he still _wants_ to.

I hear him tell me that he’s not thinking about … **_that_** … but it makes me sick, because _I_ am thinking about it. Not because I **_want_** him inside of me right now, but because Alex was _supposed_ to be the one that **_claimed_** me. He was the one I dreamed would be my first since I met him in Jumanji.

Feeling that part of him didn’t just startle me into my senses, but it reminded me of what I can’t have now. Alex. Alex as my first – my **_only_** … and I can’t _bear_ it.

I can’t bear that my father ripped that away from me.

I descend into tears. They pour down my cheeks and fall into the steaming bathwater and my vision blurs. Alex shows concern and draws me into his chest. I feel my breasts push flush against his front and I want him to touch me.

Not sexually … but with a loving, tender touch. I **_want_** him to comfort me, the way no one ever has before him. The same way he comforted me last week, when we stood in the park. His arms around my body, fingers tangled in my hair … I _want_ – I **_ache_** – for that kind of compassion right now.

So, I _ask_ for it, softly.

“A-Alex?” I whisper, “J-Just _hold_ me?” I plead.

He promised that he won’t leave me again. That he is going to stay with me – protect me – but I don’t know whether to trust that sentiment. He still has two daughters … that **_need_** him … a wife that **_loves_** him …

I try not to think about it right now.

He **_saved_** me … even though I didn’t _want_ him to.

He’s asking me to _live_ – _for_ **_him_**.

So, I’ll **_try_**.

Alex’s arms draw me in closer, until I’m so close I can feel him again – **_all_** _of him_ – and I don’t flinch away this time. I settle into him, until my eyes grow heavy and exhaustion seeps under my skin.

* * *

_Alex_

I don’t know how long I end up holding her for. I just know that it’s what she needs, so I grant her wish.

The water is lukewarm by the time I separate her from the front of my chest, and I begin the long, tedious process of physically cleansing her of the filth and blood caked on her skin.

I start at her neck, scrubbing away the remaining blood from what looks like a blade that has cut her there. Then I make trails across her chest, trying not to innervate her skin, too substantially.

She makes little keens in her throat from time to time, but otherwise makes no move to stop me.

I can see embarrassment written in her eyes. It’s more like a deep, bruiting shame that doesn’t dwindle in her, actually.

I even notice her turn her face away when I reach her pelvis, just above her pubic area. Her jaw locks, then she turns her head back, to look me in right in the eyes.

I realize I’ve hesitated at her pelvis, and I note the darkness that dances in her eyes – it’s the same undeniable twinge that hit me when she told me about the boys that had ‘ _hurt’_ her in the past, last week – and I understand **_immediately_** what has happened.

My hand starts to tremble and I _can’t_ make it travel lower … I can’t make myself touch her **_there_** …

“ _Bethany_ …” my voice catches with tremors, and I ask her again, “ ** _Who_** did this to you?”

There is a flash of agony that sweeps behind her eyes, and is immediately followed by a breathy sob and shake of her head. Her hand lifts to conceal her mouth and she lets out guttural sobs and moans of tense, agony.

I want to help her. I want to take back whatever happened to her, today, but I **_can’t_**. I feel so helpless, because _all_ I can do, is sit here and watch with devastation while **_she_** breaks down.

“W-Why didn’t you l-let me d-die? I **_w-wanted_** to d-die!” she starts to hit me, now, and I let her. I let her beat at my chest and strike me hard across the cheek with one of her hands. I let her crumble and I catch her, when she inevitably tires herself out and collides her face into my chest.

I kiss her forehead and soothe her as best I can, the way I would for my daughters. The way I would if little Bethany were hurting this way – or **_any_** way.

I wonder why Bethany’s parents aren’t here. For a moment I remember the smiling, happy little girl that Bethany had been when she was two. I remember her cradled in her parents’ arms with a carefree, glee, that only a toddler can possess.

I wonder what happened to tear that smile from her lips. And I wish so desperately to fix what ails her. But I **_can’t_**. I’m so fucking **_useless_**!

“I couldn’t let you _die_ , Bethany … What about your _parents_? Hm? What about your _Mom_ and _Dad_? They’d miss you so much.”

She goes stiff in my arms. I feel every muscle in her freeze with shock. Then, she is retracting from my arms, violently. Like I’ve physically **_violated_** her … then curls herself at the opposite end of the bathtub. Knees tucked up, face pushed in to hide it, and nails dug deep into the sides of her kneecaps. I watch her dig them in hard enough to draw blood!

“ _Bethany_ … What’s **_wrong_**? What _is_ it? Did I **_do_** something? I didn’t _mean_ to … Have I _hurt_ you?” I panic, and search for the damage as I prop myself up on my knees, trying to inch in closer to her, without actually touching her.

She sobs harder and shrinks away with a flinch.

I take the hint and back away a few inches, giving her space.

I realize it might not have even _been_ anything I’ve done. It could be a sudden flashback – or a _memory_ … It could be the realization striking her regarding what has transpired …

I don’t know anything, for certain. And **_that’s_** the problem.

I’m floundering without all the answers that I so desperately need her to tell me.

I can’t push though; she needs to tell me in her own time. I want her to feel **_safe_** , not pressured.

I let her sit like that, for a long moment, neither of us saying anything, only her sobs filling the air. Every parental instinct inside of me, urges me to reach out and hold her. To comfort her until her tears, dwindle and fade away, but I don’t. I actively fight against those urges.

And eventually, her tears do stop on their own … but when she looks up at me, there is a hollowness in her blue eyes.

“Alex?” her voice is almost empty, quiet, “Would you ever _hurt_ little Bethany?”

I furrow my eyebrows and I wonder what she means by such a question. It comes out of left field and I take a moment to gather my thoughts enough to supply an honest answer.

“Of course, _not_ …”

She immediately looks away from me, and trains her eyes down into the soapy bathwater.

“Not even if you thought she was _pretty_? Not even if you were **_lonely_**?” I feel her trying to dig deeper and I feel my stomach turn. I don’t understand why she’s asking me these kinds of questions …

“I **_love_** her, she’s my **_daughter_** … I could **_never_** hurt her, Bethany. Same as I’d _never_ hurt you … Of course, I think my little girl is _pretty_ , beautiful even, but that’s what most parents think about their children, and it doesn’t make me want to **_hurt_** her … not in the way I **_think_** you mean …” I try to explain to her what it feels like to be a parent. At least in my mind.

When I became Bethany’s father it was under circumstances that I wished were different, but I found that I cannot regret her. Or Sarah. I love both of them with all my heart. I shudder to think of anyone, **_ever_** hurting either of them.

Bethany doesn’t look up she just keeps staring down into the still water in the tub.

“It’s because you’re a _good_ , Daddy,” the way she says that word makes my skin crawl, apprehensively, “You wouldn’t climb into her _bed_ at night … you wouldn’t **_touch_** when she pleads for you **_not_** to touch …” I can see her mind slowly fracturing apart. I can hear it in her **_voice_** … see it in her glossy stare …

I inch closer as understanding starts to worm its way underneath my skin.

She doesn’t try to pull away this time, as I fight back persistent tears and tilt her chin up in order to look her in the eye.

“Y-Your father … **_he_** did this to you?” I can barely choke out the words and I glimpse a quiver of revelation in her broken gaze. It’s only there for a second and then she tears her cheek from my hand and squeezes her eyes shut. Winding her arms so tightly around her drawn-up legs that her flesh turns from pink to white.

In this instant I hate that man with a raging fire that I didn’t know I could even possess inside of me.

I would have given my whole life to protect Bethany’s and this man had ravaged her … scarred her … ruined her … made her **_feel_** worthless …

There are no words that can express how deeply the fiery pits of hate burn in me towards the man that fathered her.

“I b-begged him to s-stop … I f-fought and I … I t-tried to **_stop_** him …” I bunch my hands into fists, the pigment shading white to match hers as I listen in agonized disquiet, “I-I was a _v-virgin_ , A-Alex … I w-wanted to **_stay_** a v-virgin … I p-promised _you_ … I promised t-there’d be n-no one else …”

I realize for the first time what she meant in the letter. About breaking **_two_** of her promises to me.

I couldn’t understand when I read it, what she meant by ‘ _being with someone else_ ’ when she had clearly planned to end her life.

It now makes awful, mind-shattering sense.

“God … Sweetheart … You’re _not_ … **_Bethany_** …” I scramble for words, but she collapses into my arms and I’m thrown for a loop. I draw her into my chest and I nuzzle my nose into her hair, breathe her in and kiss her forehead, cheek, temple … wherever I can, while my hands grasp tight to her hair.

“I’m h-his now, d-don’t you s-see? I c-can never b-be yours, b-because he m-made me h-his!” she hisses those words like they’re poison, bitter on her tongue. And I reel with the cusp of my own horror.

I spent so long simmering in my own pit of loneliness. I’ve been down to the depths of despair. I’ve known agony and self-loathing. And I remember how I felt the first time I laid with a girl.

I had been a _virgin_ in Jumanji. Like **_Bethany_** … I’d never given myself to **_anyone_**. So that first night, when I got drunk and did cocaine for the very first time, after I’d returned, and I wound up in a random bed with a girl who’s face I can’t even _recall_ now, I’d been so ashamed the next morning.

Because I’d realized that I could never just be with Bethany. I had _ruined_ any and all ability to just belong to her. So, after that night, I’d belonged to no one. I’d been with as many girls as I could and I hadn’t looked back … I **_regret_** it.

All of it … But I can’t take it back.

And it’s **_different_**.

Its different than what happened to Bethany – **_my_** Bethany …

“Y-You could never w-want me n-now …” she breathes in a quivering tone.

I shake my head and I feel my belly roar with disagreement toward that statement.

“T-That’s what you _think_ , Bethany?” I draw her face away from my chest and cup her cheek carefully in my palm, tracing patterns across her battered skin with my thumb, amicably, “You think I won’t **_want_** you?”

I go against my better judgement and I steal the softest of kisses from her lips. It isn’t feral and wild like the other night on that bridge, instead its soft and balanced. I taste her tears, subtly in the mix, and I finally retract, because I am so afraid that I’m going to frighten her, again.

“Beth … I **_want_** you, okay? Nothing I’ve done … nothing I’ve _said_ … none of it’s ever been for **_lack_** of wanting you …” I smooth my hand across her back with my free hand, rubbing soap and water across her brutalized, but supple, skin, “And when you’re able … when you’re **_ready_** … I’ll make love to you.”

I feel her beginning to relax underneath my touch, her tears fall silently down her cheeks.

“Y-You can’t …” she breathes, “you’re t-too old f-for me … r-remember?”

My heart twinges with pain.

“ _Bethany_ —”

“You didn’t want me when I w-was _pure_ … **_v-virginial_** … you definitely c-can’t now t-that I’m n-not …” she rushes out, clearly trying to flood me with reasoning.

“Listen to me, Bethany … _Please_ …” I begin to plead with her, insistently, “What he’s done, it doesn’t _count_ , Sweetheart … You’re **_not_** tainted … not in _my_ eyes. You’re still a virgin, because you didn’t want it. You didn’t **_want_** him …” I can tell she isn’t convinced, and I decide to explain a little more, “I don’t remember who I lost **_my_** virginity to, Beth. I’ve been with so _many_ girls … I’ve had so many one-night-stands, and I’m not _proud_ of them. But they meant nothing to me. In my _heart_ , I never cared for any of them. And I **_still_** don’t. Even being with my wife feels empty and hollow … nothing in the world would compare to being with you. Because I care for you … I **love** you … everything is different when it’s with the one you love, I know because even though I’ve never been with you, the kisses we share make me feel things that I haven’t been able to before. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be with you …”

Her eyes soften and I can tell that I am finally getting through to her. She’s finally starting to _understand_ my meaning.

“I don’t want t-to **_ruin_** your f-family …” she admits.

I shake my head, softly. “You won’t. I love my girls, but when I thought I’d lost _you_ … the whole drive over here for the duration I’d believed I would be too late … I realized the unforgivable mistake I made, by not _choosing_ you, like I always planned to. I can’t live in a world where you don’t exist … and I don’t _want_ to, Bethany. I don’t **_want_** that …” I kiss the base of her neck and touch my lips to her shoulder.

She winds her fingers in my hair and lets out a few choked sobs.

“I t-thought it w-was best … you s-said – on the p-phone—”

I clench my hand against her side, digging in harder than I mean, and she squeaked, prompting me to loosen my grip, “I _know_ what I said …” I rush out, “and I’m sorry, Bethany … It truly **_was_** unforgivable. I should have known when you called—”

“I-It’s not your f-fault …” she simpers out.

I shake my head. “It _is_ … it **_is_** my fault … I should have **_listened_** … you needed me and I wasn’t h-here …”

“It’s n-not … Mom let h-him in the house ... s-she told him he c-could s-stay … but he l-left after … _a-after he_ …” I bunched my hand into a fist, in order to prevent myself from squeezing her in reaction.

“You **_won’t_** see him again … I promise. I’m going to take you somewhere safe … somewhere to _recuperate_ … and after … after that I’ll figure something out …” my mind begins to race as I think about my family cabin, half an hour’s drive from here. I’ve had access since I was a teenager. Mom and Dad don’t mind if I use it. But I haven’t since before I met Tiffany. I doubt she even **_knows_** about it.

“Take me w-where?” she retracts and searches my eyes.

“I have a cabin, half an hour or so from here. Once you’re washed, we’ll head over there …” I didn’t want to risk that man coming back for seconds. Even if I **_am_** here to protect her, I don’t want her anymore _traumatized_ than she is already, because I don’t think I’ll be able to restrain myself from bashing his head in.

She just nods, then lowers her eyes. “I w-won’t _fight_ you …” she promises and I wonder if she doesn’t want to go, but then she’s handing me back the cloth I dropped into the water, and sudden understanding causes me to blush, “It j-just … it hurts _so_ m-much, Alex …”

She spreads her thighs and I swallow the lump that’s suddenly lodged in my throat.

In this moment I have to remind myself that she **_trusts_** me – that she needs a fatherly figure right now – a **_true_** father … A **_caretaker_** …

I want to be that for her. Even if I can feel the bubbly instinct in my stomach that warns me of the implications of what I’m doing here. Of how the _world_ will see the pair of us – I remind myself **_again_** , that I could have _lost_ her.

She could have **_died_** … and I might never have seen her again.

It grounds me enough to turn her around and press her back to my front, so I can spread her legs apart and wipe _delicately_ at her center. She makes little hitches in her breathing. Tenses up at the shoulders and actively cries out when I brush against her opening, still trying to clean all traces of the attack from her skin.

This is the hardest thing I’ve **_ever_** had to do.

 _Seeing_ – **_hearing_** – Bethany in this unspeakable kind of agony makes me want to kiss her everywhere. It makes me want to _avenge_ her. And I want to **_kill_** her father for making _her_ want to _die_ – for convincing this sweet, innocent spirit that she’s not _worthy_ of anything good.

I want to avenge her **_stolen_** innocence.

I wish I could go back and _stay_ on the phone … go to her when she **_called_** for me. Rescue her from the man that marred and _brutalized_ her flesh.

“Bethany …?” I finally whisper, when I’ve finished and she’s in agonized tears.

She doesn’t answer me. She just closes her legs, turns around on my lap, and clings tight to me, as though I’m her life support.

I drop the bloodied cloth and hold her in my arms. I cry with her and apologize to her in the cusp of her ear until my voice is dry and cracked. I want more than anything to know that she’s going to be okay. That she will heal, given time, but I don’t _know_ if she **_will_**.

The words in her letter are still burned into my brain. And I know she might still believe herself to be a hollowed-out husk. A _shell_. Like our avatars in the game.

I want _better_ for her. I left her so that she could **_have_** better …

I shouldn’t have _left_ her at all …

I don’t know how long it takes to towel her off, after I pull the plug on the drain and heave her out of the barely warm water. I don’t know if I hurt her, because her eyes have gone _distant_ again – and she’s not uttered a word through any of it. I don’t even know if she’s present, in her mind when I gather a duffel bag from her closet, and stuff a bunch of her clothes as well as a slew of her other personal belongings inside.

She won’t so much as glance at her bed, she insists on sitting on the floor, while she waits for me and I can’t help but notice the blood stains on her sheets. The proof of her stolen virginity is spattered on top of them. Right along with her father’s seed. I hadn’t _noticed_ before, because I’d been too panicked while saving her life, to take in my surroundings.

My sense of morality kicked in to consume me.

I can’t leave her sheets like they are. She’s made it clear she doesn’t _want_ her mother to **_know_** … and I won’t _betray_ her – **_ever_** _again_.

So, I stripped the bed and throw her sheets in the washing machine and turn it on, before I return to help her dress.

Helping her up off the floor, I can’t help but see how difficult it is for her to even _stand_. I hold my tongue, as I help her into a loose-fitting nightshirt.

I’m not about to make her even attempt to wear real clothes. Especially _not_ panties. I saw how she winced when I asked her if she wanted to try and don a pair.

The first words she speaks aren’t until I’ve packed up my car and return to her bedroom to collect her.

“I want t-to wear you j-jacket, Alex …” she manages to whisper out, “ _Please_ …”

I’d forgotten about my leather jacket. It was still in the bathroom, where I’d discarded it before I bathed her.

“Of course, Bethany, I _promised_ , didn’t I?” I returned to the bathroom and fetched it for her.

She was quick to pull it on, bundling herself up, into the warmth of it.

Seeing her in _my_ jacket … it makes me shiver through my entire body. My mind still refuses to process, how I almost lost her tonight. I don’t know if I will **_ever_** be able to process that I almost lost her.

After waiting twenty-one years … what was I **_thinking_**?

She’s the reason I’ve been so miserable … she’s who I’ve waited for … **_yearned_** _for_ … and now she’s here … now she’s in **_front_** of me …

How could I have been so **_stupid_**?

The guilt is still a hungry beast inside of me, gobbling up my emotions and reminding me that I’m too _old_ for her … but I have to try to fight past those feelings. Because she’s Bethany … and our ages are just numbers. I have to believe that my guilt will fade given time …

She catches me watching her, with her inquisitive optics and I reach out my hand for her to take in a gesture of solidarity – of **_comradeship_**.

“What will I tell, Mom?” she asks with a defeated tone to her voice.

I waver for a moment, realizing that her mother could consider what I’m doing _kidnapping_ … that Bethany could be reported as a runaway …

“Tell her you’re at a friend’s house,” I clench her hand in mine, when she finally reaches out and takes it.

“My phone … its in the _corner_ …” she seems to remember and stares over towards the corner next to her bed. I notice her discarded iPhone there, and realize that this is probably the longest she’s ever gone without it.

I remember how much she spoke about her phone addiction when we were in Jumanji.

I release her hand, venture to the corner and collect it.

It has a missed call from Martha, but no voicemail.

“Tell her you’re at Martha’s house,” I instruct, handing her phone over.

She nods, diminutively and pushes her phone into the pocket of my jacket.

“I can’t _talk_ to her right now … I’m still **_too_** upset …” her voice isn’t stuttering anymore, but its still shaky. Noticeably unstable. Any parent would notice that something is wrong from the sound of it.

“C’mon, I’ll carry you to the car … it’s better if you rest,” I offer and she nods.

Without any further hesitation, I sweep her into my arms, bridal-style and carry her from the house and load her in the car.

She doesn’t look back at her house … not _even_ as I drive away.

* * *

_Bethany_

I still feel the barbarous touch of my father on my skin. It crawls and slinks like a _snake_ along the sand in the desert and cinches my heart … making it so I feel like I **_can’t_** breathe.

I want to explain the _depths_ of my hurt to Alex – but I don’t at the **_same_** time.

Because I feel like he’s shocked … I’ve stunned him with what I tried to do and if I tell him the true depths of what I feel … then he’ll come back out of his cocoon of shame and regret and realize that he’s made **_another_** mistake.

He can’t be with me … he said so _himself_ … and now he’s changed his tune because I tried to end my life.

I tried to make this hurt and this _pain_ end …

He is so gentle and warm … and **_real_** … my Alex … but I have to keep reminding myself that he has a **_wife_**. He has **_two_** little girls … and most regrettably of all … he’s **_not_** mine.

He _can’t_ be.

**_He. Can’t. Be._ **

The water had been like honey on my skin. And his touch as it had cleansed me had been well-intentioned, but still riddled with painful inflictions, in-between.

I feel detached and zombie-like. I don’t know how to be _‘Bethany Walker’_ anymore.

Right now, … I just feel like a stupid avatar … like a shell that has been blown apart and pieced back together with glue that will wash away with the coming rain.

Alex is **_here_** … he’s put me in his car and he’s driving me to _safety_ , just like I wanted him to do when I _initially_ called … but I want to tell him that its _too_ **_late_**. He’s _too_ _late_ to save my heart **_and_** my soul.

My father already took and _shredded_ those.

All I had to give Alex … is like a crumpled-up ball of paper … It’s impossible to work out all the crinkles once they are in place and I’ll never be completely whole to fall into place with him.

I want to. _Fuck_. I do …

But I don’t understand why he’s suddenly willing to give **_everything_** up for me.

I want to ask him what his wife will do when she realizes he’s taken a spontaneous vacation in the middle of his work week.

I have school tomorrow, but I can’t possibly attend while I look like a creature from the deep …

Social Services would be called and I’d endure a rigorous questioning from law enforcement and school faculty alike. I **_can’t_** handle that … not right **_now_**.

So, I’m _grateful_ for Alex’s help. I know that I **_need_** it … if I’m expected to stay **_alive_**.

For **_him_**.

He’s the only person I’d live **_and_** die for, at this point. I think he understands the hold he has over me and I can feel him _exploiting_ that right now.

Even if I wish he **_wouldn’t_**. I _let_ him.

I hardly notice when his car’s engine sputters off and he climbs out to unload the things of mine he’s brought with us. I wonder why he hasn’t stopped off at his own house to gather any of his own clothes or belongings, but I don’t ask him.

I just watch, like a _ghost_ , while he waltzes back towards the car and opens the passenger door, only to hoist me into his arms.

It’s warm in his arms … and I find myself seeking out and nuzzling into his body heat. I drape an arm around his neck and push my face into his chest and drink him in. He smells like the soapy bathwater he washed me in. I _still_ can’t believe he took a bath with me … coddled me like I was an infant … like I’m his **_daughter_** …

That sentiment should make my skin crawl, but it only makes my heart flutter. Because my real father never gave me that. He’s always been rough and creepy.

Putting his hands where I **_never_** wanted them …

Alex isn’t like my father. He’s a _good_ man … a good dad to his little girls.

When he tries to lower me to a king-sized bed, in what I assume is his bedroom here at the cabin, I cling tighter to him and I know its childish, but I ask him to stay.

“Don’t **_leave_** me, Alex …” I hurry out in a whispered plea, “… _stay_ with me …”

I feel him tense. He goes uncommonly rigid for a second, before his forest green eyes soften and he offers me a nod.

“Just let me lock up the car, okay? I’ll be _right_ back.” He does release me then and I relinquish my hold around his neck. I feel the cold, emptiness the second he leaves the room.

And even though he’s back before I can even feel the cold sink into my bones, causing me to clutch at his leather jacket, it still hits me like a _freight_ train.

He’s a **_married_** man … this is probably the same bed he’s taken his **_wife_** in … and a surge of jealousy creeps into my heart.

Because I’m always going to remember my first time as something twisted and painful … but Alex’s wife probably remembers **_her_** first time as soft and gentle … especially if it was with _Alex_.

I try to shove those thoughts away as Alex reappears, strips off his coat and shirt, before climbing under the covers with me.

I gasp when he draws me full-on, into his chest. I drink in his manly scent and try _not_ to think about the pain that plagues over every inch of my skin and bone. I try not to think about how **_much_** I wanted Alex just this morning. How badly I ached in a **_good_** way when I thought about him there with me … and now he is here and I’m unable to let him touch me **_that_** way.

Because of the trauma – because I know that the flashbacks will mentally shred me. And I’ll be steeped with guilt just thinking about his clueless wife – and how unworthy I am of what he’s done for me.

“Won’t your wife be _mad_?” I break the silence and must have startled him, because his muscles bunch at his shoulder-blades for only a second but long enough for me to notice, before he answers.

“I texted that I have a work emergency and plan to stay in the city for a few days,” he admits and I shiver up my spine.

I feel untenable guilt that he’s had to lie to his wife because of me …

“And do you think she _believed_ you?” I press.

I know I shouldn’t ask … but I can’t **_help_** myself.

He glances down at me and I can see the beginnings of a worry-line on his forehead, just over his eyebrows.

“She always has _before_ ,” he admits with a gravely crackle in his vocals.

I feel more guilt swirl in my belly like a hurricane, stirring me up inside.

“She won’t call your work and make _sure_ ...?”

Alex fingers my hair with tiny ministrations and I try to settle under the calming sensation of it, but still find it difficult, with all these thoughts spiraling in me.

“Beth … I don’t want you to feel _guilty_ , okay? I never should have _married_ Tiffany … I’ve never been capable of loving her like I _should_ … My marriage was always bound to crumble … so if she does call my work, I’ll _handle_ it. This is _my_ mess; you’ve done nothing wrong …”

I feel like a child in this moment. I know he doesn’t have all the answers, but it **_feels_** like he does. Like he’s lived this _whole_ life without me all these years, that I can’t quite compete with. He’s had all these experiences … all of this **_life_** … and what have **_I_** had?

What can I give him that warrants him walking _away_ from Tiffany and his perfect picket-fence life?

My expression must be cause for concern in him and I realize I haven’t made any effort to respond to his words, in truth I don’t know **_what_** to say.

“You still _want_ this, Beth … _don’t you_?” his voice trembles against my skin and I feel his breath on me.

I realize I could say that I **_don’t_** want him. That I _can’t_ … and he _might_ believe me. This could be the moment where I drive him to return to his white-picket life, to his marital bed and his daughters and I will be the thing that haunts his mind, but will always remain just a dream … A girl that saved him in a video game, that he _wanted_ but was unattainable. I can _choose_ to break his heart. I can **_choose_** to give him up …

But I find that the **_words_** won’t come.

That I can’t be selfless and make this road easier for him.

Because it wouldn’t be true. I can’t lie to him …

He knows my darkest secret now – and he still choose me for some reason. It might be his guilt over what I just did, that will eventually leave him after a while and make him decide to return to his wife like he did last week … but this also might be **_real_**. He might actually have chosen **_me_** for keeps … and that’s part of what holds me back, too.

The possibility that when the smoke clears and I’m bandaged back up enough to attempt to be his, that he’ll still **_be_** here. Wanting me … making **_love_** to me … like he promised he would in the bathtub.

“I’m always going to _want_ you, Alex … You have to **_know_** that …” I finally relent with tear-stained eyes.

He seems to almost gasp a sigh of relief, that’s partially a choking sound and dips his head to kiss me. It’s soft and tender – like it was in the bathtub. And I lean into the kiss – lean into **_him_**. My heart races and I feel like I’m human for the first flicker of an instant since my father _wrecked_ me.

He’s timid with his kisses right now and I know its because he fears **_breaking_** me. It’s a loving gesture and it makes me _love_ him more than I ever thought it possible to love someone …

“Try to rest now … I’ll still be here when you wake in the morning …” Alex has this way of making everything _feel_ okay … I can’t even explain _how_ he does it.

Its this tone in his voice and it’s the same all-knowing – all-encompassing – tone that he used in Jumanji.

This wisdom that can only come with living a wide array of life. He’s lived _through forty-two years_ of hell – in **_and_** out of Jumanji. That’s not counting the sixteen years he lived before he was drawn into the game – and another thought comes to mind.

“I was _older_ than you …” I muse, tingles traveling my skin.

His eyes crinkle, and mouth draws into a tight line.

“ _What_?” he questions me, gently.

“In Jumanji … I’m _seventeen_ and you were trapped at _sixteen_ for longer than you knew …” I put meaning to my thoughts, “I was _technically_ older … and now _you’re_ the one that’s **_older_** …” I trail off, a thoughtfulness in my eyes.

He lightens, the first hints of amusement twinkling in his green eyes that I’ve seen since he came for me earlier, and he plants an almost fatherly kiss to my forehead.

“Only _technically_ …” he agrees, “What’s your point, Sweetheart?”

“Only that … that you’ve seen so **_much_** now … and been _through_ so much … and I _wonder_ … I wonder if I can compare … to the _memory_ you have of me …” I realize I lost the point somewhere in there – if I ever **_had_** one at all. I blink a few times, a few loose tears falling unabated, leftover from the frenzy and wide-array of emotions I’ve endured these past hours.

“What was it _like_ …? To be sixteen for so long inside ‘ _Seaplane?_ ’” I ask curiously.

He nudges me with his nose and seems to ponder my question for a time, and I wonder what thoughts are scurrying through his head. I want to be less immature for him. I want to be _grown_ up – more like **_him_** – but I have a lot of catching up to do.

And I _know_ that.

His face turns haunted, expression dismal, and he appears evasive, clearing his throat in this way that lets me know about his discomfort.

I advert my eyes. “You don’t _have_ to tell me …”

“it’s not … it’s not _that_ ,” he divulges and sucks air through his teeth with a low hiss. “There was almost an unending _loneliness_ to that place … like … like I had taken so much for granted in _this_ world …” his hands dragged up to cup my cheeks, brushing the cusp of my skin, maddeningly slow. The skin is still bruised, but his touch is magnetic. “Like _touch_ … I was _so_ hungry for **_touch_** … _human contact_ … a conversation … _real_ food … I just felt hungry for _everything_ I was missing. It was like the most exquisite torture … and then I met _you_ , Beth.”

He tilted his forehead to brush mine and captures my lips again with his own.

I keen and wish more than anything that my body isn’t so painful right now. I’d ask him to touch me. To explore my _every_ crevice, but I’m too touched by violence to _let_ him. I’d hit the roof.

“I’m sorry …” I mumble, wondering how much of the sleeping pills are still in my system. Maybe enough to lower my inhibitions. Same as alcohol might. Enough to make me ask him such an _insensitive_ question – enough to pry into his innermost thoughts and feelings unabated.

“You don’t have to apologize … You can ask me anything you want, Bethany, **_always_** ,” he croons in his deep voice, “I’ll _try_ to answer …”

I nod my head at him. But its not lost on me that his eyes are filled with exhaustion. We’re both depleted of our energy and I know its best if I _do_ try to sleep. My body is screaming out for it, actually.

I’ve taken too many hits today. Physically. Mentally.

Everything that has happened has enacted a toll and I _need_ to sleep it off.

My eyes are suddenly so heavy they can barely stay open and I vaguely remember something before I nod off, that I mumble to Alex.

“Forgot … tell Mom … M’here …” I don’t check to make sure he’s heard me before I _finally_ drift to sleep.

* * *

_Alex_

It’s difficult to describe the mass of worry that’s lodged inside of me. I think it’s _always_ been there … almost like a sinking gouge inside of me, waiting to erupt at the most inopportune moments.

I’ve experienced varying levels of anxiety ever since I returned from Jumanji. Almost like panic attacks … or **_PTSD_**.

Spans of time where I’m _not_ myself and I scramble to find anything to take away the burning ache that lingers and eats away at me. That’s where the _drugs_ came in – the alcohol in more recent years – the rampant nights of sex, used as escapism from reality.

I feel like I’m in that place _now_ … watching Bethany try to recover from this. Seeing her struggle (even _with_ my help) to rise from bed just to use the bathroom.

I feed her meals in bed. I stay by her until she falls asleep.

She’s slept off and on for days … I’ve made excuses to her school (pretended to be her _father_ calling her in sick) and I’ve made excuses via text to her mother, so that she won’t wonder why Bethany isn’t home.

So far, I’ve said she’s at Martha’s. I hope to God her mom is buying it.

Her friends have been worried about her _continued_ absences from school, I’ve made up lies about her having the stomach flu, to them. Kept the lies going even on her social media accounts, too.

The _lies_ are piling up.

I’ve talked to little Bethany on the phone, but Sarah is too young yet to get on. I’ve talked to Tiffany, too, withholding as many details as I can so that she won’t catch me in a lie.

And the **_stress_** … the stress is eating me **_alive_** … because I’m petrified that after all of this … after **_everything_** … Bethany might **_try_** again.

She doesn’t talk much. I don’t even know what she’s _thinking_.

She eats, sleeps, uses the bathroom, repeats …

I’m afraid to _touch_ her most of the time. Whenever she wakes up, she always flinches when she first sees me beside her, then seems to remember where she is, before visibly relaxing again.

I can hardly touch a drop of food myself. My stomach rebels against it from the stress of _worrying_ about her.

Ever since the moment I read her letter I can’t stop thinking about how all of this is **_my_** fault. Why didn’t I just listen to her on the phone that day? **_Why_**?

Since I brought her here, I’ve only left her alone, _once_. Long enough to purchase food from the local store, and a few bottles of whiskey. I paid in cash, so that Tiffany wouldn’t see it on our bank statements. I would never be able to adequately explain to her why I was an hour away from my workplace, purchasing food.

I’ve held off for the past three days. But it’s Friday now, and my anxiety is **_tripled_** because I don’t know how to explain to my wife why I am staying in the city for work, through the weekend. And the gaping, aching wound in my stomach still isn’t any better. I tremble as I down half a bottle of whiskey in one chug.

I’ve tried to stay sober for Bethany’s sake … but those old _monsters_ have raised their ugly heads to haunt me again.

Bickering and bantering in my head – reminding me that I’m not a savior to Bethany … I might have _selfishly_ kept her alive because of my _feelings_ for her … But that doesn’t _make_ me a **_savior_** …

She’s a shell … she said so herself in the letter she constructed for me and I can feel it in the way she avoids eye contact with me. In the way she doesn’t talk … doesn’t **react** … doesn’t even ask to see her iPhone!

I know she is addicted to her phone – **_was_** addicted to her phone – and she hasn’t asked me for it once!

She’s nothing like she was the night I brought her here – and I wish I could see inside her mind. I wish I could ask her without feeling like I’m encroaching on her personal space.

I need **_something_** to tack down this crippling anxiety.

I feel the haze already with the first chug and I wait a few minutes for the warm sensations to come over me. I try to write off the demons in my head. The ones that remind me of Jumanji – of the **_jungle_**. Even after twenty-one years, I still fend off nightmares of that place.

Sometimes, even while I’m _awake_.

“Alex?” the soft sound of her voice wrenches me back down to Earth and I lower the whiskey bottle guiltily down to the kitchen table, as I focus on her.

She’s stood in the hallway, leaned against the wall, with only my jacket and one of my t-shirts on.

Her second day here, I showed her the old clothes I’ve had in this cabin since I was a teenager. Some of them still fit me (most do actually) and she’d asked to wear one of my shirts and I’d handed it over to her. It was one of the few things she **_has_** said, since that first day.

“Bethany,” I stand immediately and go to her, “What’s wrong?”

She chews her bottom lip and I see her hands are at her thighs, gouging into the skin and I wince at the sight, knowing she’s hurting herself, but I don’t draw attention to it. I’m nowhere _near_ perfect enough to judge what she does to keep grounded.

“I woke … and you were **_gone_** …” she stares up at me feebly with a concerned look spread across her features.

“I’m sorry … I wasn’t gone _too_ long,” I coo to her, my words are mildly slurred, even to my own ears. Through my concern it doesn’t register in my mind that she’s actually managed to get out of bed on her own, which is a considerable _leap_ from yesterday.

I’m much too ashamed of my own stream of thoughts to notice. It’s difficult _not_ to be attracted to her when she is dressed in barely **_anything_** and it’s that thought which makes me feel _vile_. Especially since I was able to overcome it when I _bathed_ her, just the other day. So why is that self-control dwindling?

Her epidermis is still mottled with bruises, but still, I can’t help but find myself so **_aroused_** by her that I physically ache. I suppose I wasn’t wrong the other day when I’d believed her being close to me would wear me down, given time. Because it **_is_** … even though I **_can’t_** touch her, being near to her is enough to make the longing practically unbearable.

“You’re drinking …” she states the obvious, with a cant of her head toward the half-consumed bottle I’ve left behind.

I swallow my guilt. “Just a little, it takes the _edge_ off …” I defend, solemnly.

Bethany chews her bottom lip, and I notice the bruise under her eye has lightened a bit in pigment, same with the one on her jaw.

“I’m sorry I’ve been _such_ a burden … You must feel even more like a _parent_ to me, than before …” she sounds dismayed about it and it makes my heart patter.

When she digs her nails in deeper against her thighs, I decide I _can’t_ ignore it any longer and reach out to detach them. Brushing my thumbs over the bloodied tips of her nails.

“You _aren’t_ a burden, okay?” I push as I try to make her understand.

“But you’re drinking because you **_do_** feel guilty … anxious about being here with me, aren’t you?” she retorts and I feel myself burn under her gaze.

“It’s not the reason I’m like this …” I can’t think right through the haze that has clouded my mind.

“You’re ashamed of your attraction to me. You’re _always_ going to be ashamed.” She tries to pull her hands from my grip, but I don’t release them. I can’t let her believe that, even if it is _true_ at least in **_part_**. Some very deep part of me is always going to believe I’m too old for her. I can’t take back the nineteen years of my aging before she was born …

“I’m ashamed of **_a lot_** of things, Bethany,” I admit, with an offhanded sigh, “and yeah … I’m _always_ going to feel my _age_ when I’m around you … when I think about you the **_way_** that I do … but Bethany … I’ve chosen **_you_** , okay? I haven’t figured out logistics, and I’m probably going to end up fucking up _both_ our lives, but I just can’t think about where I’d be _without_ you, Bethany …” I’m shocked that I can string these sentences together through the bleary settling of whiskey in my system, but I manage it.

And I recognize tears ringed in Bethany’s eyes.

“Alex … Tell me you _mean_ it … That … That you are choosing me because you **_love_** me … not because you feel **_guilty_** about what I tried to do … Promise me that you still _want_ me … **_after_** …” she pauses with a sniffle, and begins to squeeze my hands so hard I feel her nails gouge my skin. She must be drawing blood, but I don’t stop her … I’d rather she hurts **_me_** than _herself_.

That’s a sick thought, but I realize it’s true.

“… You saw what he _did_ to me …” she finally manages to choke out and my heart skips around in my chest.

“Bethany—”

“… And I c-can’t … I can’t _fathom_ how you could **_still_** want me after you _saw_ that … I tried so hard for so long to _forget_ how he’d hurt me … and I _tried_ to be so perfect … so perfect because it helped me erase who I **_was_** when he did those things … And I’d _finally_ forgotten about him … about those memories … and now … now I’ll _never_ be able to erase **_him_** from my skin … and he’s _here_ … he’s on _me_ like a _leech_ … like this disgusting _cockroach_ and I don’t know how to feel … I don’t know how you can _look_ at me … and not see **_that_** night … how you’ll **_ever_** be able to love me the way you did **_before_** … _look_ at me and see the girl that lived in your dreams for _twenty-one **years**_ … Because … I’m not **_her_** now, Alex … I’m not pure and confident and **_pretty_** … I’m just all the regrets and things that **_he_** made me into …”

She’s gripping my hands _so_ tight by now that I can physically **_feel_** my blood seeping out around her nails and I don’t even think she’s aware of what she’s doing. I don’t cry out, I let the pain seep into my skin – I feed off this pain that she’s granting me. I’m using it to latch on to her words, to listen to her the way she deserves to be listened to, and I don’t interrupt her.

“... I feel _disgusting_ … I feel **_used_** … and I … I wonder why he _hates_ me so much … why he came **_back_** after all these years just to rip away my purity … and I’m _sick_ Alex … I’m sick because I keep wishing it was **_you_** … I keep wishing that **_you_** would have come home with me _that_ night … the way I _planned_ for you to … and I wish you would have taken what we **_both_** wanted … Because now … now I don’t think you want that, Alex … I don’t see how you **_can_** want that … you’re drinking because you can’t tell me that you made a _mistake_ when you choose me last night … You saw how he **_broke_** me … and you’re a **_good_** man, Alex … You’re **_such_** a good man … and I’m a fucking _train wreck_ …” she finally trailed off, having released **_every_** imaginable fear that she could, those somber blue optics of hers drifted down to our attached hands.

To the indentions she was making in my palms.

“ ** _Fuck_** …” she gasps, noting the damage she’s inflicted and tries again to detach her hands from mine, but I keep my hold on them.

She’s reignited this burning, searing ache inside of me that (in all honesty) probably never actually fades entirely. And it’s begun to take control of my impulses, especially now that the alcohol has loosened me up – made me feel _less_ like myself … with all my morals and disheveled parts stripped down to my raw center.

I shouldn’t respond to what she’s vented out at me, the way my body wants me to – I shouldn’t even be **_thinking_** about it … about having this kind of _reaction_ right now …

But this is the most she’s spoken since the first day I brought her here – and I’ve been driven half-mad with the wanting to know how she feels – how she **_truly_** feels – and why she’s been practically mute. Has all this been stirring in her _heart_? Her **_head_**? For the last _three_ days?

I keep our hands conjoined and (despite my better judgement) steal a kiss. I don’t treat her like she’s _breakable_ – not like in the bathtub – because I understand how that made her feel. She’s _bruised_ … she’s _scarred_ … but she’s not some _fragile_ _broken **china**_ … she’s not irreparable and I want her to understand that.

To truly know it in her very bones – her marrow.

So, I kiss her with everything inside of me. Every fiber that makes me up has been shoved down and packed into this bundle of stress – _of_ _nerves_ – and of everything. I’ve been ready to fall apart at the seams for years.

Bethany is at the heart of **_everything_** I am – and I don’t know how to convey that to her.

I don’t know how to tell her that I can never see her as **just** a product of her father’s destructive tendencies. I can’t **_only_** see her as some disgusting, ripped apart, thing that is untouchable because of one event that was forced upon her – one unforgivable malevolent act that she **_never_** wanted.

No – nothing could _ever_ change how I **_feel_** about her.

I’ve spent my whole damn life since I reemerged from that godforsaken video-game, trying to forget Bethany. Trying to get **_over_** what she **_did_** to my heart. Trying to get over **_her_**.

Her kindness, her selflessness, when she saved me … and could have ended up dying herself because of it. How can I _construe_ all of that to her in words?

The simple answer is that I can’t … I don’t know **_how_**.

I taste her tears mesh into our kiss. I drag my tongue inside her mouth, parting her lips and tasting her.

She still tastes like honey and toast … the simple breakfast I coaxed her up to eat not very long ago (despite it having been after four in the afternoon) and I have to force myself to pull back. Because I have to use my words … I have to provide some kind of verbal response. She _deserves_ that.

“I **_want_** you, Beth … I don’t care if you’re _damaged_ ,” I realize how that sounds and I backtrack, “I **_do_** care … but only because it makes me _angry_ … and it makes me want to **_protect_** you, I want to kill him for what he **_did_** to you … for making you feel _all_ those things … for making you feel like you don’t **_matter_** … like I could see you as this _feral_ creature because of it …”

I finally release one of her hands and use it to draw her face towards mine, until we’re _centimetres_ apart … until I can feel her breathe on my lips.

“If I’m ashamed of **_anything_** right now … in this moment … it’s that I **_do_** want you … that I have to use every ounce of my willpower not to **_take_** you back to bed right now and make you _mine_ … **_That’s_** why I’m drinking … to stave off the urge …” I feel her shudder down her body, but not in a bad way. It’s almost beautiful the way she looks at me, as I tell her the truth, as what it is, and not what she’s _perceived_ it to be.

I draw her in with my hand, until she can feel the bulge that I was trying to drink away when she caught me, out here. The stress has caused my tension to build and I use _sex_ to relieve it. I have for so long, that I didn’t even **_realize_** I was doing it. Not **_really_** …

But without my routine … without being _inside_ my wife … I’ve been without **_any_** release of the gathered pressure and I had hoped _whiskey_ would do the trick, but Bethany is **_here_** now … and she’s said so _many_ things … so many _untrue_ things … and I want her to **_understand_** me … I don’t want to be this dark, hulking mystery to her.

I’ll let her _see_ my darkest pieces if it will help repair those that ail her, too.

I hear her moan when she feels my **_erection_** , tenting out the front of my jeans. I know she doesn’t have any _panties_ on underneath my borrowed, old t-shirt and I feel ashamed, but that truth makes my prick twinge in yearning.

“ _Alex_ …” she’s releases her grip on my hand and uses the new freedom of both her hands to wind up and tuck into my strands of hair, and she tugs, loosely, her tongue lapping out to wet her lips, and it’s like she’s made a decision, I _see_ it there … twinkling behind blue eyes, “… you don’t _have_ to drink …” she detaches her hands from my hair and begins a soft, burning trail down my neck, across my shoulders, down my chest … hot, searing, **_flaming_** touch, “… you _have_ me, Alex … I’m **_here_** …”

I want to **_take_** , right here, in the hallway – and my mind drifts to thoughts of pushing her against the wall and taking what I’ve fantasized about from her, for twenty-one years …

But I steel myself against it. I try to _fight_ what my body wants, in order to reclaim my commonsense. I don’t even remember doing it, but at some point, I’ve pressed her back against the wall, because I can **_feel_** her, all the way up my body – and my hands are bunched in the fabric at her waist. I can feel a few droplets of my blood (from where she dug in her nails) ooze into the material.

“Don’t **_tempt_** me, Bethany … it’s _cruel_ to tease … If you knew how badly I **_want_** you … you wouldn’t _do_ this to me …” I half-plead, half-beg her in my delirium and use every ounce of self-control to remind my touch-starved body that she’s still a walking bruise … that my touch _will_ **_destroy_** her … _anyone’s_ touch will …

I find solace at her neck, kissing up the column in order to give my trembling lips a niche to distract my rampant, sexually-charged, thoughts.

“I _mean_ it, Alex …” she breathes, between keens and simpers in reaction to my ministrations.

I draw back in order to stare into her eyes. I need to know she’s serious.

“I promised when you were **_better_** —”

“I told you, Alex,” she cuts me off and I can see the seriousness in her expression, though I can’t understand it, “I’m _sick_ …” she kisses my lips and its my turn to whimper, then, all at once the burn floods to my loins, full-force, because she begins to palm me through my jeans, cupping and kneading my **_aching_** need, “.. because I wish you had been the one _inside_ of me … and I don’t **_care_** if it hurts, I trust you, Alex … and I don’t want to spend another minute … hour … day … belonging to **_him_** , when I want – _need_ – to belong to **_you_**.”

It’s **_those_** words. Those simple, dark, demented words that finally _shatter_ what remains of my resolve. I’ve fought myself – and **_Bethany_** for longer than I ever should have dared.

 _‘How have I held out this long?’_ I wonder to myself. It seems **_impossible_** that I have …

This ache is too _profound_ – too lodged down deep inside my innermost chambers, to fend off.

I have the presence of mind, to at least hoist her off the hardwood flooring. I carry her back to the master bedroom and push her into the pile of sheets and blankets.

There’s this need-driven frenzy between us, as our clothes are wrenched off of our bodies. I can’t even tell if its my arms or hers, in the thick of this moment, we’re so _determined_ to feel one another’s **_skin_** …

I take in the perfectly-shaped mounds of her breasts, pointed upwards and perky, right in front of my eyes. I suck one of them into my mouth and lap at the puckered nub, tentatively. I try to look past the bruises and the scars that mark her up. Instead, I focus on how _beautiful_ she is.

She purrs under my touch and arcs up her spine. It’s not **_fair_** that Bethany has been so mistreated – _so **abused**_. Because I feel my entire body engulfed by flames just from a single glance at her.

She’s like this beacon that draws me in and I am helpless to escape her every whim – her **_every_** desire. I allow her to draw me in with her moans and her kisses. She keens in her throat, tilts back her head and scratches her nails down my back.

Pain should turn me off – but instead the opposite is true.

The harsh, unforgiving dig of her nails, followed by the tearing bleed of my epidermis, only causes my prick to jerk at her thigh. God – I’m like a **_teenager_** again on top of Bethany.

I feel like I’m in one of my wet dreams – like I’m seconds away from spilling my seed … and I have to calm down … because I want to savor this … _savor_ **_her_**.

“Bethany –” I whine in order to steel myself against my body’s whims.

“Please, Alex … If you mean it … if you **_really_** mean it … _then make me yours_ …” she leaves little gasps between her sentences, pants against my skin just where my ear is.

She has no idea just how **_much_** I mean every word I’d said. I push apart her thighs in order to slat myself between them. The pressure mounts in my belly, and the static charges in the air. I want to be gentle – I **_need_** to be gentle – and I remind myself (through my arousal) that Bethany is going to _hurt_ when I do this …

But it’s what **_she_** wants …

And I’m never going to deny the girl I love, anything she wants, ever again.

“Hold on to me …” I instruct, and wait for her to wind her arms around my middle.

Once I am finally satisfied that she’s prepared, I prod at her entrance with the head of my erection. I’m leaking over her mound, dribbling traces of pre inside of her, before I can even _push_ all the way in.

I shudder with the first clench of her walls around my manhood. I jab my fingers into the mattress and clench my hands into tight fists of twisted pleasure. It’s never felt this way inside a girl before. I’ve laid with so many now, that I have forgotten what it felt like my **_first_** time, but I know it wasn’t like **_this_** …

Nothing in the **_world_** can compare to this …

“F-Fuck—Oh!” I simper and suck at the base of her neck in order to steady myself.

I want so badly to rut into her like a hound. I want to lose myself in the **_taking_** of her. I want to ravage her … God … I just **_want_** her …

But I have to be gentle, I have to _prevent_ myself …

Bethany makes a small squeal when I push in and I listen to her noises, trying to determine if she’s in a detrimental amount of pain or if she’s okay. I can’t _tell_. I force myself to push up, just enough to steadily catch her eye, but even those beautiful blue orbs, aren’t giving too much away.

I lift my hand and cup at the cusp of her cheek. “Speak to me, Beth … Does it hurt **_too_** terribly?” I kiss her, in a bid to calm her, before I draw back to study her again.

It must be my fatherly instincts, but I **_need_** to protect her. I need her **_safe_** … and my carnal urges are being tamped down, _somehow_ , just at the brink, while I make absolutely certain that I’m taking proper care of her.

“It’s okay, I’m okay …” she confirms, “You’re **_bigger_** than he is, Alex …” those whispers that tickle across my lips, shouldn’t send chills up my spine like they do … I shouldn’t be **_more_** aroused by the fact that I am more adept between my thighs than her _rapist_ – her **_father_**. I should, in fact, be even more sickened that _my_ Bethany knows what it feels like to **_take_** her own father … but in this moment, those words strike arousal in my chest. They fuel this ebbing need and I succumb to the scourge of urges that ply through my blood like **_fire_**.

I draw up her thighs and begin to pump my hips in steady, driven motions.

I moan against her throat and she drags her nails, **_again_** , down my spine, coupled with little noises that depart her lips.

“If I _hurt_ you—” I start to whisper in a last-ditch effort to offer her reassurance.

“Don’t worry, Daddy, you won’t, I **_trust_** you,” she whispers hotly in my ear.

I should reel back in shock and horror at what she’s just whispered. I should probably climb off of her and insist that we can’t **_ever_** do this again, **_because_** of it … I should fight the instinct inside of me that screams ‘ _take’_ the second the word ‘ _Daddy’_ is out of her swollen pink lips …

But I **_don’t_**.

Instead, I overload with lust. Fit to burst and ready to scream out her name. I want to prompt her to call me ‘ _Daddy’_ again. Possibly even whisper in her ear that she’s **_my_** little girl. That she’s always going to **_be_** my little girl … Then it strikes me like a thousand lightning bolts – I **_do_** have a little girl **_named_** Bethany … _God am I **sick**_ …

I pull back enough to look into her eyes, my thrusts dissipate and I see Bethany’s eyes focusing into mine.

“You’re my **_daddy_** now, Alex … You’ll keep me **_safe_** , won’t you?” I feel my heart shatter and I struggle not to let the emotions that threaten to rake me to my core, take hold.

I drag my wet lips across her collarbone, follow a path that eventually leads them into crashing against hers in a sweep of powerful lust, that I hope **_speaks_** volumes.

Because I’m momentarily _speechless_.

That’s what she **_wants_** from me in this instance? A **_father_**?

Is that how she sees me when I’m buried inside of her? As a _protector_? A **_parental_** figure?

God, it’s perverse to think these kinds of thoughts, but I can’t _help_ myself. I’m so turned on and I don’t even know the why behind it.

“Is that what you _need_ , Beth? You need me to be your **_daddy_**?” I let the words slip before I really contemplate them. In this second, I’m too consumed by overwhelming arousal and the desperate want of my body to return to its sensual, swiveling ruts, from just moments ago, to think.

My left-hand quivers and tangles in her strands of blond hair, my breath uneven and shaky.

She makes an instant keen in her throat and pushes her nose up to brush my cheek.

“Yes, _Daddy_ … **_Please_** …” she begs me.

I try not to let my guilt _claw_ at my insides as I pick up the pace on my thrusts, beginning to drive into her again, with passionate force. I want her to feel me, but I don’t want to inflict _untenable_ damage, however.

So, I desperately try to find a happy medium. My **_every_ **thrust is heightened, while my muscles bunch at my shoulders, trying to deflect my arousal – trying to make this encounter _last_ , between us.

But every friction-laced draw in and out of my prick to her tunnel has me reeling. My stomach is in _knots_ and I see the beauty in her face – in her _**azure**_ eyes. And my body makes me inescapably aware that I’m _not_ going to last much longer.

Not when she winds her arms around my shoulders, draws me down until our bodies are pressed together and I’m rutting with sloppy jerks that shake us _both_ , and she whispers hotly in my ear, “ _Harder_ , Daddy – **_Cum_** for your little girl …”

The wrongness of _everything_ is totally gone from my mind, because it’s all I can do to ride her into the mattress. The bed hinges squeak and Bethany’s moans sound loud and clear in my ears. And I need to touch her – _everywhere_ – _**anywhere**_. My hands _need_ to touch!

I push one of them between her thighs, brush and _tweak_ her little button at the top of her mound. She makes a noise between a gasp – and a **_cry_** – then her walls are squeezing down on my invading phallus. And I know I’ve made her sensitive body cum.

I know how _sensitive_ a teenage girl is, I remember **_being_** a teenager – and I feel like I am one, _now_. My cock is angry red, veins bulging, foreskin dragging up and down the length until I am teetering right there on the edge of release.

She starts an endless trail of whispered ‘ _Daddy’s_ ’ seductive and low in my ear.

And that’s **_it_**.

I shudder and spend inside of her. I cry out her name, sink into the furthest depths of her entrance and _radiate_ with whines. Spurt after spurt of seed empty from my balls and I still my hips and _quiver_ , bodily atop her.

It’s all I can do **_not_ **to lose my mind, as I cry out her name in a longful moan that I’ve held in for twenty-one _**years**_.

I always _knew_ sex with Bethany would be different, but I didn’t realize just how _much_ … How much I would feel in the moment – in the **_immediate_ **aftermath.

I feel like my skin is on fire, like my nerves are aflame and I want her to touch and alleviate the burn in my muscles … and almost like she can read my mind – she **_does_**.

Bethany’s fingers slide from around my shoulders and rub and _grind_ into the muscles of my neck, then over my chest, massaging the built-up tension – the _**strain**_ – and her sensual touch makes me keen in my throat.

I return the favor. Letting the sensitivity really hit home in her, as I rub and squeeze her sides, stomach, and nipples. She’s _so_ sensitive to my touch that I feel her cry, push up her hips and cum again for me, just from her nipples being massaged.

“ _Fuck_ …” I sigh out, through the moment, letting her come undone underneath my skilled hands.

I want to make her feel _good_ again, so I slide one of my hands back down between her still, splayed thighs, and circle her swollen, aching clit again with the pad of my thumb.

She’s **_so_** sensitive that she can’t take it and I feel her squirt over my fingers, eyes rolling back. She bucks her hips, chasing the pleasure, as I ride her through it, countless more times.

I’m suddenly addicted to the sight of her in the grips of release. I don’t want to see her come back down and remember her pain and bruised skin, so I **_keep_** rubbing – **_keep_** getting her off on my fingers, until her spray coats us both in clear liquid and the bedroom smells like sex and a combination of our separate musk.

“That’s it, Beth, _keep_ cumming for me …” I coax down at her, and she squeezes her nails into my sides, hard enough to leave _bruises_ – and make me _bleed_ – but I don’t care. In this moment, it all feels **_so_** good …

So, I let her maim me and I drive her over the edge, repeatedly, until she’s curling her toes and quivering uncontrollably, and I know she’s seconds from being in _pain_ – so I **_stop_**.

She breathes a sigh of relief and nuzzles her face into my neck, seeking comfort.

I wrap her in my arms and go slack against her. I can still feel myself driven up _inside_ of her – still hard, but just barely. And I wish (for perhaps the **_millionth_** time) that I was still a teenager, too, so I could recover like I used to and go again. But my body is _older_ and it doesn’t always do what I want it to, especially in the bedroom – and I **_hate_** myself for it.

“D-Daddy …” she finds her voice somehow and I lift my head to peer down at her.

“What’s wrong? Have I _hurt_ you?” I mumble, because I knew I would ( _hurt_ _her_ ) when I started, but the way she pleaded with me – pleaded to feel _**something**_ else – had taken the helm and I’d given what always should have been _hers_ , to her.

“N-No …” she sighed out, “Just …” she paused again, “… this is the best night of my life …” she finally whispered, “I wanted you to know that …”

Her words strike this chord in my heart that I’m not quite sure what to do with. But I’d always meant to give her this – this night of love and passion. I’d always pictured that we’d have each other more than once, whenever we finally came together. That there would be nothing but love and need between us.

But that’s not how it happened.

There’s so much _pain_ in this moment, linked to why she needs to call me ‘Daddy’ now.

Why she needs someone to protect her.

“Bethany …” I sigh, through my drunkenness. I want to say something beautiful, like she has. I wonder how much pain I’ve invoked in her – while I took my pleasure. I would ask, but I know she won’t _tell_. And I wish this ugliness didn’t hang over this night we’ve shared.

I wish for a lot of things, I _can’t_ have.

Her eyes turn troubled and I see the shininess _dwindle_ a bit, then darken.

“Do you not … was this not … not _**good**_ for you? I mean … is this not … not what you _expected_ it would be …?” she is suddenly self-conscious again, when she asks those words and I feel like _shit_ for making her feel that – even for a _**second**_.

“ _No!_ ” I’m quick to jump at the chance to defend my emotions about what we’ve done, “I mean, yes … no! Fuck …” I slow down and breathe my way through what I’m trying to say.

“Bethany … you’re everything I’ve ever _imagined_ – dreamed – you’d be. I just … I wish I didn’t have to **_hurt_** you, to feel this way …” I realize that I’m slurring my words and they aren’t coming out like I mean them to.

I see Bethany, through my haze of vision with a few tears in her eyes, which is precisely what I don’t want. I reach up to swipe them away and she brushes my chest with her hands.

“What if …” her lips quiver, and she stops herself and looks away.

I guide her face back to mine and give her a questioning stare, “What if?” I repeat, prompting her to finish what she’d been primed to say.

“What if … I _like_ the pain, Alex? W-What if … what if it helps me **_f-feel_**?” she breathes out, unsteadily.

I don’t know what to say to that – I don’t know if I even understand what she means by it …

“Bethany …”

“Don’t, Alex … I know it’s sick, okay? You d-don’t have to t-tell me …” she sniffles and closes her eyes.

“It’s … It’s not, sick … Beth … Baby …” I coo and kiss her lips with a subtle graze, “… If it’s how you _feel_ … how you **_need_** , now … I won’t be mad … or _disgusted_ …” I want to make her understand – _need_ to make her comprehend, which is growing increasingly difficult with my current mental impairment, “You’re **_mine_**. We’re each other’s, now, you get that, don’t you? Nothing you _need_ is going to make me think less of you … I made love to you, didn’t I? I’ve touched every inch of you, it’s humanly possible to touch …” I meld my lips to her neck and suck a loving trail of kisses, into her skin, and I run my hands everywhere I can across the landscape of her body, feeling her shiver under the sensation of it.

“Alex …” she whines in a little hitch.

“If you tell me you want to hurt – I’ll _give_ you that …” I pinch the bruises I find on her skin and she hisses in her throat, cheeks flooding with color, “… If you tell me you want me to be **_gentle_** – to make love to you again, it’s **_your_** call, Beth … and I _won’t_ judge it … I won’t judge how you **_survive_** what **_he_** **_did_** to you …” I make gentle quivering trails over her breasts, then slide them down over her belly, “… Just **_survive_** this, Bethany … survive **_him_** … because I can’t fathom losing you, and its fucking _selfish_ and I know that, but Baby, I lived so **_long_** without you … I can’t do it again,” I hear her whimper as I connect our lips in a contemporary kiss, then lift up to whisper hotly against her petals, “I won’t … Bethany … don’t **_ever_** ask me to do it again …” I’m starting to crumble and I think she feels it, too.

She wraps me in her arms and I’m no longer sure just who is comforting who, as I settle into her arms and she kisses my forehead, just before I descend into an ocean of tears.

* * *

Bethany

I’ve lingered these past days in the between. Neither _here_ , nor **_dead_**.

I’ve felt Alex’s touch and reveled in the way he holds me while I fall to sleep, but I wake from nightmares of my Daddy’s _cock_ inside of me.

Always this forceful, meandering presence that makes me want to fucking **_die_**. I still want to take a bunch more pills, but I _can’t_ – because **_Alex_** …

So, I let him take care of everything, while I had laid in his bed, thinking of all the times he’s **_fucked_** his wife in it – and wondered if I actually _belong_ here, after all.

What does he plan to do? Is he going to _leave_ her? Run away with me, like a rebellious teenager would? Abandon his _daughters_? Could I live with myself if he took **_that_** route?

I didn’t know, still don’t … because I don’t know **_anything_**. I just knew that I hated feeling like my Daddy’s used garbage – and I had wanted **_my_** Alex to _touch_ me.

I wanted him to touch me like he _promised_ he’d touch me, and I didn’t care about the consequences. I just wanted to _feel_ wanted. After three days of letting him take care of me, I had needed to do **_something_** for myself.

So, I’d seen him gone from bed and struggled to make it to the living room. Seen him drunk and in torturous _need_ of a woman’s touch and I gave him **_mine_**.

I’ve **_wanted_** to make love with him for weeks – wished he’d been my **_first_** so hard that I broke my skin with the _wanting_ of it … but he **_can’t_** be my first, just like I can’t be **_his_**.

And I felt so disgusted with the reality of it, that I made him my ‘ _Daddy’_ instead.

I’d realized in the moment, with him buried inside of me, taking his pleasure, that he **_is_** pushing forty – that he’s soft, warm, put-together in most ways like a ‘ _daddy’_ should be, and so compassionate. And I’m in love with him – so why can’t I make him **_my_** daddy instead?

It’s _sick_ – but I needed it, in the moment – and I **_still_** need it, now.

He made my first – _consensual_ – time one of pleasure, not so much pain, and he touched my skin until it sang with the need **_of_** him and **_for_** him.

I will never forget the impassioned drive of his hips and shake to his breath – he’s built so handsomely and in such beautiful shape for a _grown_ man. He made me _feel_ his needs – and not my real daddy’s _cruelty_ on my flesh.

Even his words after are more than I can bear. He’s so gentle and sweet and he **_means_** it … I _know_ he does.

Even if I’m this broken, disgusting thing he’s in **_love_** with me. I _get_ that now.

I don’t know what either of us are going to do, but I know that I can’t leave him again, even if I want to, sometimes, because I won’t **_hurt_** him … I never want to see him _breakdown_ like this, again. Not because of what **_I’ve_** done …

“I won’t, I _promise_ …” I whisper when he pleads for me **_never_** to ask him to live without me.

How could I do that, _now_?

Now that I’ve seen what it’s **_done_** to him … what **_I’ve_** done to him?

We’re both in tears by this point and I can’t hold back the floodgates any better than he can. I wipe his tears, while he wipes mine, and its seconds before we’re kissing again. This time it’s sloppy and needy and I want to be in control – I want to show him that I _can_ handle it.

So, I roll him onto his back, managing to keep him plunged up inside of me in the process, and find myself straddling him, now.

He’s looking up at me with those tearful eyes and I smile back down at him, subtly. Because _we_ need this … **_I_** need this …

“You think you can get it up again for me, Daddy?” I guide his hands from where they’ve moved to rest at my bruised hips, and intertwine our fingers, pushing them back on either side of his head, against the fluffy, feather-pillow.

His cerulean eyes stare up into mine, with this _ache_ in them – maybe it’s the same ache from earlier – or a _longing_ , but either way, I can see that he wants _more_ than he’s **_taken_** – he was just _afraid_ to **_hurt_** me.

“I don’t know,” he admits, sheepishly, with this embarrassment in his eyes and I want to take away his shame, because it isn’t shameful to grow older. It isn’t shameful to be less able to _perform_ …

I swipe my tongue across my lips and I sigh, because my body is radiating with sensitivity from his earlier ministrations across my overtly responsive nipples and clit.

We’re both still coated in a mixture of our juices, but if anything, that makes me **_more_** aroused – to be filled with his essence – to know that someday I might carry his babies, too. It makes me feel trusted, loved. He trusts me with his seed, he loves me enough to give me his babies if I **_want_** them. He’s already promised to give me anything – all I have to do is **_ask_**.

“It’s _okay_ , Daddy,” I reassure him, gently, “it’s **_okay_** if you can’t.”

I start to rock my hips in a slow swirl, ignoring the harsh bites of pain that shoot down my thighs, and up into my hips with every movement. I revel in the pain, because it’s a reminder that I’m **_alive_** …

Alex is hot in seconds. I see how he keens in his throat and jerks this way and that, under my sensual persuasion with my hips. He’s horny – and I see that reflected in his eyes when he looks up at me.

“ _Fuck_ … **_Bethany_** …” he grunts in his throat and humps up his hips, and I feel his seed-slicked manhood drive up inside of me a few times. He isn’t quite back to his fully erect state yet, but he’s getting there.

I wet my lips with my tongue and lean down to mold our lips together in angst and passion. He’s trembling and I feel him rut with increasing need, because we’re both excited again, and I can practically sense how deep into his emotions he is.

I roll my hips harder and faster, steeling myself against him with every drive forward. There’s such a tangible need and want to feel this pain – to revel in it – and I realize that I’m driving myself closer to **_my_** peak again, too.

He’s lost in the moment and moaning in seconds. I feel his erection is fully tumid again, but he’s _too_ excited – and it’s **_too_** much.

I feel him spill again, hear the way he moans my name and floods with color when he realizes he lasted only a few seconds that time. But I can’t fault him for enjoying it – for finally knowing what it feels like to make love, after so many years of loveless, meaningless sex. It must have been taxing on him. To have these needs, to feel so much, and not be able to have the one he wanted.

I wish I could comprehend the kind of suffering he’s endured, but I can’t.

Just like he can never truly understand mine.

We’re soulmates, stuck in this vicious need for each other, but each with years of suffering in our hearts that neither of us can ever truly comprehend, in the other.

It’s **_a lot_** and it’s **_nothing_** all at the same time.

I shiver and work my clit against his pelvis, feel myself cum and spill juices down his twitching length, over his balls, and finally collapse down on his chest.

He wraps his arms around my middle and holds me tight to him.

I want to tell him what I’m thinking, but it’s a lot and I don’t really know **_how_**.

“Alex …” I breathe and turn my face up to steadily peer into his eyes, planting my hands on his chest, lazily.

“Hm?” he grumbles out, using one of his freed hands to stroke at my cheek.

“Did it **_hurt_** …?” I ask, and realize I haven’t said enough, “The years _without_ me … I mean … I know you said you were with **_other_** girls but … did it ever feel _good_ when you were with them …? Like **_this_** …? With _Tiffany_ … was it **_ever_** like this?” I try to put my thoughts into concise words, but I can’t put how I feel **_into_** words … what I feel **_with_** Alex … it’s profound and like nothing I’ve ever known with other boys.

Even _before_ this moment – even **_before_** our love making.

It’s like the _universe_ meant for us to be together – like **_Jumanji_** picked us to _need_ and **_want_** this way.

The game made him suffer loneliness for more years than he’d _lived_ , and caused me to find him – to **_love_** him – because it was _cruel_. The game enjoys human suffering – **_feeds_** off it.

I _know_ that _now_ , after spending time inside of that dreaded landscape.

And Alex suffered so **_greatly_**.

He slides his hand across my cheek, brushes a thumb over my lower lip, and I close my eyes with a sigh, my hot breath on his thumb.

“You _know_ it hasn’t …” he breathes, gently, “… Bethany … there’s no way I’d ever have this with Tiffany …” he plays with my lips, gently, with his own, “… with **_anyone_** ,” he admits, “and you know how I’ve grappled to _feel_ without you …” his eyes half-close as he says it, “… I’ve only come close with my children … with my **_daughters_** …” he hummed, “… they were my only light, before **_you_** …”

I shiver and chills shoot everywhere, simultaneously, as I allow myself to settle into what he’s saying.

I want to be reassured by it. Reassured that he’s as much in the moment and the wild-rush of it all, as I am.

“I love you, Alex,” I rest my chin on his chest and squirm remotely, jostling his erection still prodded up inside me.

He jerks and makes a low gasp from the sensitivity, I imagine, so I _stop_ rolling my hips. I didn’t _mean_ to hurt him.

“I love you, too …” he manages to breathe out. I lean in and steal a kiss, which he returns with tranquil movements.

I’m starting to feel tired and even though I don’t want this moment to pass, I know that it already is … I can _feel_ my heartbeat returning to its normal rhythm and my thoughts are becoming harder and harder to draw to the surface. And finally, my eyes are becoming heavier and heavier.

We should get up … we should go take a shower, clean our mess off ourselves, but I decide, it doesn’t matter. Rather, I can’t be bothered to do anything about it, right now.

So, I cuddle in close and allow my mind to drift away.

* * *

Alex

After the first night, it felt _impossible_ to be separated from her.

Like, the instant we finally took the final dive over the edge, neither of us were _ever_ going to come back from it.

I tried so hard and for so long, just to **_exist_** without her, that I never realized how at ease I would feel once I actually _had_ her. I forgot what it felt like to _not_ struggle.

We woke the morning after, with our limbs and bodies in a tangle of parts. I’d carried her straight into the shower, turned on the stream, and taken care of my painful morning wood by claiming her against the tile wall.

I’ve never felt such happiness in my life – never felt so _sure_ of myself. So certain that I’ve made the proper choice in her.

We stayed the remainder of the week in my family cabin, long enough for her _visible_ bruises to disappear, so that she could resume her school life.

It was difficult that last night in the cabin. Neither of us had wanted to close our eyes, because we knew we’d have to return to civilization afterward. It was like being ripped from the best part of our lives and forced into a fire. It was _excruciating_.

I’d been extra explorative with her skin that night. Kissed and savored her like I was afraid to lose her, and she’d done the same with me. I’d lost count of the number of times she morphed my _name_ and ‘ _Daddy’_ together and screamed for me through the night.

I promised we’d meet up again. That the cabin was **_just_** ours, and that my wife didn’t know about our little oasis. It was sheltered up North and that I’d divorce Tiffany, just as soon as I could figure out how to go about it, and Bethany was of age.

When we returned to ordinary life it was pure _torture_ – at least on my end – because I had to pretend to be in _love_ with Tiffany, again. It took twice as much alcohol to actually _perform_ in our marital bed. I think she noticed – how could she **_not_**?

I’ve always felt awful about Tiffany, but at that point I’d felt even _worse_. Everything about us had been a lie. Everything I **_told_** her, every _kiss_ I gave her – every story I’d tell her right before I left for a night to go be with Bethany …

So **_many_** lies I’ve told – and _lived_.

I was tired of living in the lie. I’d been tired of living in the lie for twenty-one **_years_**.

But none of it mattered – because pretty soon the lies **_were_** over – I just hadn’t know it _then_.

I hadn’t known until **_that_** day …

* * *

“Don’t _leave_ , Alex,” Bethany’s bottom lip protrudes in a pout that makes her look so damn irresistible, that I almost consider it, but I can’t.

“I have to, if I don’t leave soon, then she’ll be even _more_ suspicious than she already is,” I sigh, and yank my t-shirt over my head, buttoning and zipping my pants, next.

“It’s **_my_** birthday, Alex … and you know I can’t sleep when you’re _not_ with me …” she whines in that cute little tone.

It’s not fair when she holds this kind of leverage over my emotions. She knows how I feel about being her _protector_ – her shield **_against_** the nightmares.

It’s been hell for her to have to sleep in her own bed, in the house where her own father violated her, but there’s been nothing I could do. She hadn’t been eighteen ( _until_ **_today_** ) and now that she is, I plan to offer her the cabin as a permanent home if she wants it, which I’ve meant to be her final birthday surprise. _I_ plan to take care of her, now.

“So it _is_ ,” I agree with a lingering smile on my lips, “and I’ve spent the past day worshipping every **_inch_** of you that it’s humanly possible _to_ worship, but now its time to return to the real world.”

She’s stubbornly still not dressed and she makes her intentions clear. She climbs out from under the covers and spreads her thighs, while holding eye contact with me.

“I’m still **_wet_** for you, _Daddy_ … come back to _bed_ …” she commands in that low, sultry tone, she knows will have me on my knees for her in a heartbeat.

“Bethany …” I breathe out in a husk, “you **_know_** what that does to me …” I attempt to plead with her. I already feel my jeans tightening in the crotch. It’s only been an hour or so since I was last inside of her, but my body doesn’t care about that right now.

She comes in closer, positions her hand over my tented-out jeans, then strokes and kneads me expertly. It’s only been two months since we _first_ came together, but she’s learned to play dirty like a _pro_ – she’s learned quite a _bit_ in such a short time.

“I _know_ , Daddy … and I also know that you’re going to be hungry for it, tonight … aren’t you?” I groan, because she’s still fondling me while she says it, “Yeah … and you’re going to think about plundering my tight, hot, cunt when you’re inside of **_her_** , and you won’t be satisfied because she’s _not_ me … _will you, Daddy_?”

It’s _torture_!

 ** _She’s_** torture!

Because she knows very well that I can’t stand the time lapses between when I’m _with_ her and **_without_** her.

“ _Fuck_ … **_Bethany_**!” I whine and she uses one single fluid motion to straddle my hips.

I can barely function at this point and I start to pant, feebly, when she grinds her wet sex down on me.

“Stay with me … just **_one_** more night …” Bethany pleads and I finally crack and give in. I can’t hold out against her will.

How can I? When she’s all _over_ me like she is?

I hoist her by her waist and launch her back onto the mattress. I climb on top of her and push her legs up in a ‘ _v’_ then bite one of her thighs just to make her _feel_ what she’s done to me – how she’s **_tortured_** me! – and I extract a little whine from her.

There are a great many scars on her thighs and my bite isn’t hard enough to even puncture skin, so it won’t stay. My Bethany has _enough_ marks to last a lifetime – she doesn’t need another _permanent_ one of mine.

I fiddle with my jeans, freeing my throbbing need, and thrust it up inside her, in one swift, _decisive_ movement.

We both let out a collective gasp-turned-moan and I don’t hesitate to rut against her. She’s made me feel like a teenage _boy_ again. I’m horny **_all_** the time – sensitive **_everywhere_** , and I just want to spend every waking second of every day _inside_ her.

“You can’t tease me like that, Bethany … It’s not _fair_ … You _know_ how I **_need_** you …” I pant into her ear, between thrusts.

I have her on the _verge_ in seconds – and I, too, am seconds from being pushed over the threshold. It’s like something _about_ Bethany makes me almost feel younger, when we come together like this. I can’t **_explain_** it, and maybe it’s just because my body has _finally_ linked with a girl that I’m _actually_ madly in love with, but I’ve been able to go more rounds in one night with her, than I ever could with Tiffany.

What I **_feel_** with Bethany … It’s almost magnetic and intoxicating.

“You tried to leave me on my _birthday_ – I figured it’s all fair game now …” she hisses in my ear, while dragging her nails down my back through my shirt.

I cascade over the edge, after that. I can’t _help_ myself.

I tremble and whine against her neck, while I breathe her in.

I wish I could _morph_ with her – stay like this **_forever_**. Make our essences one in the same. Then I’d never _have_ to leave her. Never had to go **_home_** to my wife.

I love my _girls_ , but in the moment, I wish it was just _me and Bethany_. I wish we were the **_only_** two people on Earth. Then, the fear I have of society and their opinions of us don’t have to **_exist_**. It can just be the **_two_** of us – and no one else would be around to make me feel like a piece of shit for **_loving_** her. Because I know once it all comes out, no one _will_ understand. And our little oasis will be hard to find again – it won’t be like **_this_** anymore.

So _easy_ – so **_free_**.

I start to come down from my high, between shudders and deep breaths. I don’t know what I am going to **_do_** with my Bethany.

She’s so needy all the time – and she makes me crazy – and she makes me **_burn_** for her until I fear I may be _consumed_ by my need.

“It’s almost Christmas, there’s things I need to do at home …” I grumble against her collarbone.

“Christmas isn’t for another _week_ … and I **_need_** you, Alex …” she retorts.

“I have a _wife_ …” I remind her, “… and two little girls that _need_ me, too …”

She makes a face, “they’re asleep by now – and your wife doesn’t make you _cum_ like I do,” she teases me and I chuckle.

“Bethany …” I groan, “you’re gonna be the **_death_** of me …”

She grazes my cheek with her thumb and steals another kiss.

“You don’t **_get_** to leave me … not until we have **_grandbabies_** , understand?” she always gets this panicky look in her eyes when I mention _death_. I don’t always think before I _say_ things. I feel a stab of guilt in my chest.

“I won’t **_leave_** you,” I promise her, somberly, “not until we have _grandbabies_ ,” I agree.

Her eyes are still distant though. I can see that her impeccably good mood has been suddenly altered and my stomach flips over.

“I _mean_ it. I’m right **_here_** , Bethany … I don’t plan on going **_anywhere_** …” I reassure her.

She stares up at me, with a look in her eyes that tears through me like a knife.

“Do you even _want_ more children?” Bethany asks. “With _me_ , I mean … We’ve never …talked about it.”

She’s _right_. We haven’t spoken about whether or not I want more children, but I figured she already knew the answer. I love my daughters, but my heart isn’t closed off to the idea of additional children.

“Is that what you’re _afraid_ of? That I don’t _want_ anymore children?” I ask her, incredulously.

She searches my eyes for a few seconds, then shrugs, “You have _two_ , already …”

I kiss her cheeks, then her nose, and finish with her lips. “So then, when _you_ have my children, I’ll have three and four. You’re my _soulmate_ , Bethany. I want **_everything_** with you,” I wish I could make her understand just how _much_ I want to have it all with her.

I’m still trying to work out how.

She brightens a little bit and I kiss across her jaw.

“I want to spend _every_ night with you that’s humanly possible …” she whispers so softly I barely hear her, “but it feels like we spend more time _apart_ than together.”

My heart cracks at the sentiment, but she’s **_right_**. We do spend more time apart right now, but that’s only because she’s been underage and I couldn’t **_publicly_** date her, while she’s underage. Then there are our mutual friends.

Spencer, Fridge, and Martha.

I don’t know what they will say when _they_ find out – but I fear they might put the pieces together. Spencer especially. He’s highly intelligent, just like me. Our friends might not believe that our affair didn’t start until **_after_** she was legal. Especially considering all of the absences and excuses Bethany and I have made in order to spend these days together.

“After the holidays, I will file for divorce, I _promise_ ,” I spear a few kisses up the line of her neck.

“A divorce could take **_months_** to go through … and until then, I’ll be at _home_ , in **_my_** bed … unable to _sleep_ without you. The nightmares are worst when I’m **_alone_** ,” she admits, but I already know they are.

I have more frequent nightmares when she’s not with me, too.

Mine are old, however. They’ve been around since I came home from Jumanji. I’m used to doing battle with them, **_alone_**.

“I have one _final_ birthday gift for you, Bethany.” I decide that now is as good a time as any to unveil my intentions.

“A present?” Her eyes light up like little lightbulbs, causing me to chuckle.

I finally pull myself off of her and tuck myself back into my jeans, before I pull out the key, I tucked in my pocket, earlier in the day.

Her eyes reflect her confusion, and she rolls the key over her in her palm a few times. I attached it to a little rubber eight ball, keychain, and a dog tag that reads simply: _Jumanji_.

“A _key_? What’s it **_for_**?” she ponders.

“It’s for _this_ cabin,” she looks up at me with bewilderment.

“I don’t come here _without_ you …” she furrows her eyebrows at me.

“I know how it feels for you to have to sleep in that bedroom where … where _it_ happened …” I clear my throat and shake away the unpleasant memories, “so I _had_ hoped … I **_do_** hope that you’ll come live _here_ , instead.”

Her mouth falls agape and her eyes bulge to the size of dinner plates.

“You **_mean_** it?” she suddenly looks like a princess being offered her fairytale, “You want me to live **_here_**? With **_you_**?”

I smile, “Well, only until my _divorce_ finalizes. I’d come stay with you when I _can_ , like I’ve been doing, but you would have a _safe_ place, where you father can **_never_** find you … at least until I can move you into my _real_ house.”

She shrieks and throws her arms around me. We plummet to the mattress and descend into a heap of arms and legs, as she kisses me.

“Happy _Birthday_ , Bethany,” I muse against her lips.

“Now you **_have_** to stay, Alex …” she breathes.

“Yeah? And why is _that_?”

She shoots me a mischievous smile, “Because, I’m going to spend the rest of the night, showing my gratitude.”

She doesn’t give me a moment to register what she’s said, before she’s reopening my jeans, tugging out my length, and going down on me.

I let out a cry from my _own_ sensitivity down there, but she doesn’t let-up, she’s determined to get me ready and raring to go again – and _this_ time … I _don’t_ try to stop her.

* * *

I wake up with my hair sticking up on end and Bethany _tucked_ into the nook of my arm. I feel spent and exhausted, because we spent most of the night tangled in coitus and moaning loud enough for this _entire_ empty cabin to hear. If I had neighbors, they’d probably have heard us.

I’m grateful for the distance between the cabins.

Bethany is so beautiful in the mornings. I wish I could wake up to her every morning.

Someday soon, I know I will. But the patience is **_killing_** me – killing the _both_ of us, slowly.

I move to sit up and run my fingers through my tousled hair with a yawn. My movement wakes her and she stares up at me with a sleepy expression in her eyes.

“Mornin’” she hums and sits up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Well you _really_ did it, you kept me out **_all_** night,” I tease without a hint of disappointment in my blue eyes. I can’t be mad at her about this. She was right, it was her birthday, yesterday, after all.

I’ll have to make an excuse to Tiffany, to do with work. I don’t know if she still believes all my overnight stays are _actually_ work by this point – but I no longer can be bothered to **_care_**.

“I _did_ , Daddy … you gonna come back down here and **_punish_** me for it?” she goads.

I make a sound in my throat and kiss her chastely, trying to ignore the way my cock twitches when she makes such a _lewd_ proposition.

“I _can’t_ , I really have to go this time,” I shift over in the bed, trying to ignore her pout as I reach for my discarded phone on the nightstand, “Don’t give me that, I **_stayed_** , didn’t I?” I chastise. And I’m sure she’s about to respond, but within seconds … I can’t **_breathe_** …

* * *

Part of me wishes _now_ that I never looked at my phone – that I never **_touched_** it. But I did and I can’t take it back. And it wouldn’t have _changed_ anything, anyway, but at least I could have had one last time with Bethany, **_before_** the devastation, if I had just rolled over on top of her and kissed her instead, gave into my **_every_** whim.

There had been dozens of missed calls. From my parents, from _unknown_ numbers, and ten voicemails – enough to _fill_ my box.

I remember the panic … that I **_do_** remember. I remember how I opened the **_first_** voicemail, listened to it and _panicked_.

I don’t think I could speak at first, I don’t think I could even **_move_**.

The pain was sudden and like a stab in my heart and in my soul – and **_everywhere_**.

From just one voicemail my parents left, I **_knew_** the story.

Tiffany had been driving the children home from daycare, when a semi-truck lost control and dove through a traffic light – she **_never_** saw it coming.

And I hope to God, our children didn’t _either_.

It was the kind of pain I’d _never_ felt before – worse than when I remerged from Jumanji to find myself a teenager still. A teenager **_without_** Bethany.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt the weight of my heart _shatter_ the way it did when I heard my father’s tears, for my wife and children.

They couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t _answer_ my phone. Why I had silenced it and **_vanished_** for a night. I have never been able to explain it to them, but I think they know now … I think they figured out the reason. Because they’d _checked_ my office, they _knew_ I wasn’t there … they hadn’t thought of the cabin, however, because why would I be **_there_**? But they must have _guessed_ by now …

Because the devastation came _first_ with the voicemails, then with the uncontrollable tears and shaking. Bethany had _panicked_ – she’d held me and cried, before she even knew _what_ was happening, because she’d never seen me like that, so she’d known it was _bad_ … whatever **_it_** was.

I’d been unable to get a word out around the crippling tears, so I’d let her listen for herself. She’d heard the voicemails – **_listened_** to the truth.

That’s all it had taken for her to dress herself, then help me dress, too. She’d snatched my car keys and driven us back to town, down to the hospital. Where she’d walked with me, hand in hand, to the morgue.

I’ll _never_ forget the sight of them, lying there.

Tiffany had been unrecognizable; her face was a mess of blood and tissue. I **_couldn’t_** look – I couldn’t see what the crash had _done_ to her, before I was nearly sick. But it was our children that left the **_deepest_** scar. The mortician had warned me it might be too _much_ for me to bear, but I **_had_** to see … I _deserved_ to see.

Because ** _I_** was supposed to pick up the children. It was **_my_** day to drive them home. But I’d lied about work … about **_staying_** late, to be with Bethany a few additional hours.

It should have been **_me_** in that car, on _that_ street, at **_that_** light.

 _Not, Tiffany_.

I had clenched my jaw and steeled myself against the reaction of my stomach. I could see the lifelessness – the _pastiness_ of my daughters.

Little Sarah with her full head of darkish brown hair. I couldn’t bear to look at her for more than a second or two. I doubted even a single bone in her body hadn’t been _broken_ , by the impact.

Then, Little Bethany.

My _oldest_ girl. My beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed, **_dream_** … She’d been such a caring, compassionate little girl. I loved her with _everything_ in me. Maybe even **_more_** than Sarah, which I _never_ would have said out loud.

She’d lived up to the name I **_gave_** her. She’d _saved_ the love of my life.

If she hadn’t come in when she _did_. Told me the ‘ _secret’_ Bethany let her see, when she **_did_** … I’d have _lost_ the love of my life. And I can never repay my little girl for that. I can never make her understand what she _did_ for me that day.

I don’t know how long I _stayed_ in there. I remember **_losing_** time, though.

I remember Bethany _apologizing_ again and again, for keeping me that night. I also remember her driving me home. My parents had been there. Waiting for me.

I remember their curious expressions when they met Bethany for the first time, _that_ _day_. Their bewilderment at how I **_knew_** her, and why she’d been _driving_ me. I’d given an excuse. That Bethany and I had met at a park in town, when I’d taken the girls. She was Tiffany and I’s ‘ _babysitter’_ on occasion.

It was _another_ lie that I don’t think they bought. Because they’d never **_heard_** of her. And had Tiffany still been alive, she’d have backed their suspicions.

But in the immediate aftermath, _I didn’t_ _care_.

Today, I put my wife and children in the _ground_.

I wished so many times that I never **_met_** Tiffany. Because she was a complication – she got in the _way_ of me and Bethany … but my daughters … my **_precious_** daughters …

I’ve put them in the ground on _Christmas Eve._

A week ago, I was planning **_Christmas_** , now … now I have a tree with all the presents underneath, but no one to _share_ it all with.

 _Only Bethany_.

The funeral was a lot. Bethany stood at my side, through it.

Fridge, Martha, and Spencer all showed up to pay their respects, and all three had thrown sideways glances at one another, because Bethany had an arm draped through _my_ arm.

I felt a lot of **_disapproving_** eyes on me. But I no longer _saw_ any of them. I think I blacked out the past week. I remember drinking a lot in the evenings. I remember Bethany taking more than one day off school to _be_ with me, but I haven’t **_touched_** her … _not since_ … not since **_that_** night …

And I have been _sick_ , since **_that_** night.

Because in a way, I’d _wished_ for this. At least in part.

I’d wished for something _simple_ and easy. I’d wished to not have a lengthy, drawn-out divorce, that was traumatic and messy for our daughters … and now, it is a _non-issue_.

How _sick_ am **_I_**?

How **_depraved_**?

I plan to blackout again, just so I don’t have to deal with Christmas Day. It’s warm near the fire, but I feel like **_ice_**.

The day was so long and trying, I just wish I could have been blacked out for _all_ of it. The judgmental stares of everyone that saw me and Bethany, **_together_** … The whispers of disbelief in the wake of such tragedy that I would have a _teenage girl_ on my arm for comfort … I’m sure the rumors are spreading like _wildfire_ – like **_disease_** … But I’ve lost the wherewithal to care about any of it …

Bethany is still in her formfitting, black dress, my black leather jacket accompanied it. That also had inspired _further_ whispers of disbelief. Not only had she been holding my **_hand_** , or been looped through my arm, but _wearing my_ **_jacket_** , too.

“ _Alex_?” It’s been silent in my living room for so long, that I didn’t think it’d ever break.

I lift the whiskey bottle to my lips and take a few chugs in quick pulls. I plan to _forget_ – I **_need_** to. The pain is far too much for me to contend with.

“ _Bethany_ ,” I whisper, but don’t look at her – **_can’t_** look at her.

I feel such _guilt_ when I look at her right now. Guilt, because I never **_loved_** my wife – because I was a **_terrible_** husband …

Bethany settles on the arm of the couch and reaches out to squeeze my shoulder. I shiver at her touch and my body **_wants_** **_her_** , something fierce – but the guilt will swallow me alive if I give in to **_that_** … to my _impulses_ , right now.

This is the longest I’ve gone without sex in a long time, and I haven’t touched myself, either.

I’m pent up … but I _deserve_ to be.

I did this to my _wife_ … to my **_daughters_** … I’m a fucking piece of _trash_ – and I **_know_** it.

I shrug off Bethany’s touch and I can almost _feel_ her face fall. I see out of the corner of my eye that she swipes away a few tears.

“You have to know I’m _sorry_. You **_have_** to know that … right, Alex?” I hear the beginning of her tears now _working_ into her voice.

I close my eyes and lift my whiskey to take another swig – but this time Bethany stops my hand _midway_ to my lips. She brushes the back of my hand with her thumb with this solemnness in her gaze that threatens to **_break_** me.

“ _Bethany_ …” my voice is harder this time, with an edge of warning in it.

She chews her bottommost lip and allows a few tears to stream freely down either cheek.

“If I’d _known_ I never would have asked you to stay … Alex … **_Please_** …” she begs me and I flinch.

“You should _leave_ , Bethany,” I whisper, “You should go back **_home_**.”

She stills in her tracks and I take advantage of her bewilderment to wrestle my hand away and take another swig.

“So that’s _it_ then?” Bethany breathes, “J-Just like that … you don’t **_w-want_** me anymore--?”

“Bethany—”

“ ** _No_**! You promised you w-wouldn’t _leave_ me … You **_promised_** … You p-promised you f-fucking _loved_ me!”

“ _Beth_ —”

“So that’s your **_p-plan_** now?! You plan to drink until you can’t fucking **_s-see_** straight and k-kill yourself f-from it?! To join your _family_ in h-heaven and leave me all a-alone?! You p-promised! Alex! **_You promised_**!”

I can’t speak because she won’t let me and I wish I could make her understand why this can’t be now, but I _can’t_ – because I don’t know how to explain it myself. I don’t **_deserve_** to be happy if my family’s dead _because_ of it. I can’t look at her and not see the _worst_ thing I’ve ever done – the most **_selfish_** move I’ve ever _made_. Why can’t **_she_** see it, _too_? How fucked up it **_all_** is? Why am I the only one that can’t **_breathe_** because of this?

She’s wrenching the bottle away before I can stop her and its slammed on the counter across the room, before she jaunts back to me, with this purpose in her eyes. And I want to tell her _not_ to, but she’s on me, before I can.

“You promised to **_stay_** with me! You promised that _my_ home would be **_your_** home – that nothing would _change_ us … nothing would change what we **_mean_** to each other! You can’t _leave_ me, Alex! You kept me **_alive_** … I wanted to die and you **_made_** me stay … You _choose_ me … Now you can’t just _throw_ me away …” her lips press to mine and I’m overcome with too many emotions, because she’s also straddled my hips.

I feel her pressed down into my erection. I’m _immediately_ aroused by her – I’ve pricked with my needs for a _week_ , now. It’s gone _ignored_ for a week.

“Bethany – **_Fuck_** … Bethany … _Stop_ … **_please_** …” I whine, as my skin crawls with this frenzy for her. It’s the alcohol and the grief, and everything in-between. _It’s a lot._

“I won’t let you kill yourself on me, Alex … I **_can’t_** let you … You have to be _here_ for me … for _me_ … _and our **baby**_ …” I don’t think she _meant_ to say it.

I see in her eyes, the moment it slips out that she _didn’t_ mean to.

Her eyes are stricken and wide. Her fingers have stilled at my sweater collar, where they’ve cupped just up my neck to my jaw.

And my heart _jumps_ a beat.

“ _What_?” I breathe.

Despite my lack of soberness, that revelation has shocked me enough to sober me a bit. Enough to comprehend what she just said.

“ _Are you_ …?” I stare down between us, where her still flat belly rests, between us, “ _Bethany_ …” I trail off, speechless.

She takes the opportunity to clamor off of me and across the room. Sobs are now rattling her shoulders and tears are spilling down her cheeks. She composes herself enough to look at me, with _despair_ – with **_agony_**.

“What did you **_think_**?!” she shouts at me, with this sudden fury in her emerald eyes, “Did you think you could _just_ … j-just keep **_taking_** me and not _ever_ leave a consequence? You spilled seed in me _every_ **_time_** , Alex!”

I feel sadness build and clench in my heart.

“It’s _not_ that, Bethany,” I manage to utter.

“Isn’t it, _though_? Because you said you **_loved_** me … You said it’s _us_ against the **_world_** … Yet, you want me to _leave_ … You’re casting me **_aside_** like garbage … took what you **_needed_** until you had your **_fill_** and then threw me _away_ … like **_he_** did …” She does choke on her sobs this time and I gape at her, _horrified_.

That’s **_not_** what I intended … **_God_** … _I fucked things up._

“I lost my whole _family_ , Bethany. It’s not that I don’t **_want_** you – it’s that I **_do_** want you! That’s the _problem_! I want to take you to my bedroom and fuck you in my **_marital_** bed! I want to have you in every room of this **_house_**! I want to latch on to you and make you _mine_ , until I’ve forgotten where _you_ end and I **_begin_** … until I’m so _dependent_ on you that I will never be able to **_claw_** my way back _out_ of you – **_out_** _of that_ _dependency_!”

I _want_ to make her understand – I **_need_** to.

If I go down the path of grief with her in _my_ house – in **_my_** bed – at **_my_** side – that will be the **_end_** of all of my _morality_ at that point.

That will be the end of _everything_ I **_was_** – _everything_ I **_should_** be.

Maybe she understands, because her eyes shift from _anger_ , to _sympathy_. _Just like that_.

There’s this _brokenness_ – this _defeat_.

“ ** _That’s_** what this is about?” she presses, searches my eyes and must find the truth sheltered in them.

“Bethany … Look at _me_ … look at **_us_** … Can you honestly say _this_ is **_normal_**? That what we have is fucking **_normal_**? It’s _perverse_ … We’re **_sick_** ,” I try to make her see, I **_need_** to, “My wife and children are **_dead_** and all I can think about is being balls-deep in **_you_**! Spending the _rest_ of **_my_** life, with **_you_**!”

I stand up, cross the room, and press her back into the wall, nearest the fireplace. I can **_feel_** the heat, but it’s not _just_ from the fire-flames nearby.

“I’ll **_ruin_** you – we’re going to **_ruin_** each other … and a _baby_ … look what I’ve done to my **_first_** _two_ …” I brush my hand over her abdomen. Push and knead her supple skin.

“It was an _accident_. It’s no one’s **_fault_** , Alex. You couldn’t have known what would _happen_ … It was a **_freak_** accident …”

I groan as she winds her fingers through my hair – tugs and plays with the ends.

“You don’t _get_ to abandon me, Alex. Not over **_guilt_** …” she lifts up her chin and connects our lips. I grunt and moan and _try_ not to rut my throbbing _**need**_ against her belly in the process.

But my attempt to keep myself grounded, in this moment, are _senseless_ , because what she says next, sends me reeling.

“Now, take me **_and_** your unborn child to what will soon be **_our_** marital bed, and make me _feel_ your grief,” she demands against my lips.

It’s enough to set me off – enough to help (with the combination of alcohol) to abate the **_last_** of my inhibitions.

I _need_ **_her_** and she _needs_ **_me_** – and she’s carrying _my_ child. She’s going to be a _mother_ … I can’t even remotely wrap my head around that concept. Being a **_father_** … _again_ … and so **_soon_**.

I have her in my arms, before I can think too much _about_ it. In the dark shadows of my bedroom, I fling her back onto the bed – and I know its going to be _rough_ _and_ _messy_ – like she **_likes_** it. She usually has to persuade me to give her **_pain_** – but this time, I _offer_ it without _haste_ – without **_hesitation_**.

I barely have time to open my pants, free my leaky, _pulsating_ **_need_** , and push aside her panties, before I burrow myself between her thighs. I’m slatted between them and a mess of noises and whines. It’s not meant to be _slow_ and **_pleasant_**.

I find I’m _rough_ – **_punishing even_**.

And she sucks air through her teeth and **_screams_** for me. All while I _bite_ , _scratch_ , and **_fuck_** myself inside of her, like a _brute_. Like her **_father_** probably did.

It’s seconds and I’ve _spent_ in her – not even a full **_minute_**. It’s _ugly_ and **_real_**.

It’s my first release in a _week_ and my balls spill a copious amount in her. Pent-up is an _understatement_ , I’ve likely reached the state of blue-balls. That’s the only thing that would have made me spill like an inexperienced, horny teenager in seconds, the **_first_** go.

I sense that she can see it in my _tortured_ blue **_eyes_** – the compiled _grief and guilt_. It’s _all_ there, sweltering underneath my skin. Pulsating through my veins like a **_monster_**.

I’ve taken Bethany in my marital bed – in a **_sacred_** place that was Tiffany’s and mine.

It’s like I’m celebrating on her **_grave_** and that of our daughters’ too.

I want to punish someone for it. I want to show the _hurt_ that’s built in me. So, I bite **_my_** Bethany’s skin. Her collarbone, neck, wrist, breast, _everywhere_. I draw blood, I **_leave_** marks – and I don’t stop until I’ve _exhausted_ myself from it.

She’s crying, but it’s not because of what I’ve **_done_** to her – it’s because she **_feels_** it now.

My gut-wrenching _agony_.

I’ve given her scars that will mark her forever. I’ve given her a part of this grief that can be built into a picture – seared into a memory. Because it needs to be between us – forever.

What our **_love_** caused – what **_we’ve_** done.

It’s _sickness_ – it’s _codependency_ – it’s _ugliness_ – and it’s **_ours_**.

The world will know that I cheated on my wife, the proof is in my mistress’s womb. I’ll be the scandal of this small little town and I’ll wear the scarlet letter I’ve earned like a badge of honor, because there is nothing else, I **_can_** do.

I don’t know how I can stay in this house, in this life, and know that my daughters – my wife – are probably watching us, from the _other_ side. I wonder how Tiffany feels about what **_I’ve_** done. If she sees me for the despicable man, I am … or if she **_has_** sympathy, because of how long I suffered without Bethany.

I imagine she’d have _sympathy_. Tiffany was always a _kind_ spirit. She was **_never_** cruel – _never_ _selfish_ – she wasn’t like **_me_**.

I delve between Bethany’s thighs, lick and tweak the bud of her pleasure, until she’s writhing for me. _Aching for me_ – and I don’t stop until she’s came a copious amount of times – a countless amount. It’s my way of healing what I wrought on her skin and in her heart. It’s what I can do to mend a little piece of my destruction, tonight.

I have finally recovered enough of my stamina, by the time I’ve _finished_ , that I can climb back over her and plunge into her again. It’s the **_bedsheets_** I wrench my fingers into, balling my fists. And the headboard I slam against the wall with every powerful rut, until the noise echoes through this bedroom like a cattle call.

Bethany _asked_ for my grief – she _pleaded_ for it – and now she **_has_** it.

_All of it._

I’ve made her take it **_all_** and as I spill inside of her, I clench my jaw and grunt through another release – another _spilled_ load of my seed.

The moans I release are almost animal – feral – and I can’t stop myself. I can’t contain what I am, now. What I feel. It’s too much – and I’ve **_endured_** too much.

I feel _broken_ and **_tired_** , so I lay down on Bethany. I push my face into her chest – and I **_sob_**.

And I realize I can’t **_stop_**. The pain is all **_too_** much – **_too_** _crippling_ – and it’s all I can do, just to fall apart in her arms.

And I **_do_**.

 _Fall apart_.

* * *

_Bethany_

I’ve spent this past week in such a heap of guilt and betrayal.

Alex loved his daughters, even if he didn’t love his wife, I saw the spark in his eye that he’d get when he talked about his girls. He is such a loving father – a loving man – and I know the guilt he feels is near to breaking him.

It’s like this big, tilt that has functioned as a driving force inside him. Almost indescribable, but I had been looking forward to getting to know his daughters – my namesake.

I only saw her that once, but she’d been so beautiful – so loved.

And her fate has gripped me tight and made me hurt. Just like Alex has hurt.

I knew I was pregnant, when I asked him on my birthday. I’d taken a test that morning, but I’d been testing the waters. Waiting for _Christmas_ to tell him the big news.

It was my present for him – _my_ **_gift_**.

It’s all fucked up now, though.

Because as I lay here, under him, holding him – sobbing with him – I can feel this burn all over my flesh. Like a landscape of pain and suffering – and that’s what we are now.

We are pain and suffering.

At the funeral I had more than one person come up to me and question why I was on Alex’s arm like I was. That I was a little young to be all over him like that – that it was a shameful display. Spencer, Fridge, and Martha had all sideways glanced at each other, whispered amongst themselves about how long we’ve been together.

I know they were, because once I approached them, they all fell quiet and gave me _disapproving_ looks. Martha was the one to speak up and say, ‘He’s almost forty, Bethany. This isn’t Jumanji anymore.’

I can agree with her on that last bit, this is no longer a game.

It’s real life, and people are hurting. Alex is hurting and I wondered if the best thing I could do would be to walk away … but when I saw him by the fire tonight … When I saw him holding that entire bottle of whiskey, not even bothering with a glass, just chugging it right from the bottle … I knew if I left him, that he’d die.

He’d drink himself to **_death_**.

He’d never come back from this _guilt_ – so I’ve taken it on **_with_** him.

I **_will_** have his child, I will be his _too-young_ , _gold-digging_ , _grave-dancing_ , **_slutty_** , wife and I will stay at his side.

Because we are in this _together_.

I listened to the _bulk_ of the whispers today and I decided tonight that I won’t let them break me. If my father’s _brutality_ – **_labels_** – couldn’t break me, then no one else will, either.

“I’m _sorry_ , Alex …” I whisper to him again, because I _have_ to – I **_need_** to.

I’m always going to be sorry for how this all turned out.

He doesn’t respond, he just sobs harder and pretty soon our tears are mixing together under the strain of both of our shared grief.

We must have nodded off, because when I opened my eyes again, it was light outside – and it was **_Christmas_**.

* * *

_Epilogue_

* * *

_Alex_

Everything moved at _lightning_ speed, after that night.

I told my _parents_ about Bethany first. They deserved to know, because I had lied to them while my wife and daughters laid dead in a _morgue_.

Of course, I couldn’t tell them the **_whole_** truth about Bethany, but I told them the bare minimum of what I _could_. That Bethany is the reason I named my _first_ daughter Bethany … that she **_saved_** me, once, and that I owe her _my_ life.

It didn’t make sense to them, it hardly makes sense to _me_ , but they couldn’t hold contempt for a girl that saved their **_only_** son – _only **child**_ – no matter how bizarre the situation had become.

They were the _first_ to accept Bethany, to understand _why_ I was so madly in love with her – and I’ve watched them together, welcoming her and the **_child_** that developed inside of her, into the family.

The rest of the town hasn’t been _so_ accepting.

Bethany’s mother believes I intentionally _preyed_ upon her daughter, and had threatened to press charges, (since the baby was **_proof,_** I’d had her before she was strictly **_legal_** ) until Bethany stood up to her and insisted if she did anything to me, she would _never_ see her again.

I don’t care for Bethany’s mother, because as far as I can tell she’s _always_ been clueless about her own daughter’s suffering and never so much as **_cared_** to notice the way Bethany feared her own father. Enough to let that monster back into the house whenever he crawled back. That _alone_ , is **_unforgivable_** in my eyes.

Martha, Fridge, and Spencer have also been _leery_ about the pair of us. Whenever we meet for coffee, they are all **_visibly_** uncomfortable and brimming with clear disapproval. But they don’t voice their concerns (at least not in front of **_me_** ) and I don’t ever bring up the _elephant_ in the room. Bethany and I just chat about _little_ things and our lives, and that’s an _end_ to it.

Bethany and I have lived together ever since _Christmas_. She stays in my house and if we need an escape from the _judgement_ of Brantford, I take a few days off work, and we head up to the family cabin where we find our own little **_oasis_** in each other.

I proposed to Bethany on her _Graduation Day_.

Still in her cap and gown, with her belly seven months _swollen_ with our baby. This one, we’d found out, was a **_boy_**.

We’d married a month later, when she was eight months pregnant, and I can still remember the _beauty_ of her, that day. I probably **_always_** will. Her hair had been styled in curls, her cheeks bright with blush, and her white dress _bragged_ elegant lace, and flowers stitched into the corset.

I still feel the ache of **_guilt_** every single day, because I remember the daughters I will _never_ see grow up, nor walk down the aisle at their **_own_** weddings, but Bethany’s given me a gift – she’s given me a second chance, at being _alive_.

I still drink on **_occasion_** , when it gets hard, but not enough to black out. Just enough to take the _edge_ off of my substantial guilt.

Bethany gave birth to our son a year ago, now. July 8th. And I’ve fallen in love with my new family, the way I ( _regrettably_ ) never _could_ with my first.

It’s in **_this_** moment that I stare over at Bethany and I watch her help our son blow out his candles, that I feel the eyes of my **_other_** family on me, and I mourn them in this instant. I mourn the _birthdays_ we will _never_ have, and the holidays we can **_never_** see.

I still have the presents from that _Christmas_ tucked away downstairs. I couldn’t open them; I don’t think I **_ever_** will. Bethany had helped me move them down there, when we woke in the morning. Afterward, we’d settled on the couch and cried for the _longest_ while. I remember the way our mourning turned to _kisses_ , which turned to **_love making_** on the couch, and there’s still so _much_ repressed guilt from that time, **_right_** after – where I found immeasurable _pleasure_ with Bethany through my mourning for what I’d lost.

It’s in the _now_ , that I reach for Alex Jr. that I wonder how we **_live_** with the overarching truth of things. Because we’ve carried on, but its still a _hole_ in **_me_**. It’s still a _hole_ in **_her_**.

Despite our smiles, Bethany doesn’t quite _glow_ the way she did before, and neither do I.

It’s a _disconnect_ between _grief_ and **_love_**. _Sex_ and **_feelings_**.

But I love the family we’ve _made_. And I **_always_** will.

It’s later today, after baby Alex is tucked into his crib, that I hold Bethany close and I drink in the scent of her hair and I wonder what she’s _thinking_.

“Bethany … Do you think we’re going to **_hell_**?” I’ve been thinking about my guilt _a lot_ lately. I don’t mean to be so blunt, but the question just sort of _tumbles_ out.

She tilts her head up toward mine. Furrows her brow and lifts a hand to brush my cheek.

“ _What_? Why would you say **_that_**?” she’s nuzzled up to me on our bed, and I can _feel_ the shadow of ghosts on me – _around me_ – as I sit here trying to keep my composure.

“Just …” I sigh, “Don’t you ever feel like they’re _watching_ us? My family … like they’re **_mad_** at us … for being _so_ happy …” It’s a _silly_ sentiment. I realize that after I say it, but I can’t take it back.

It’s what I **_feel_**.

“Oh, _Alex_ …” she hooks a leg over my waist and makes to straddle my lap, in order to peer up into my eyes, “I don’t think your family would want you to be _unhappy_ … They must understand now, why you did _everything_ you did. Jumanji _choose_ us to be together. I **_still_** believe that. We fought it and we _lost_ …” she breathes.

It’s true. Jumanji picked _us_ to love one another.

Perhaps the game – in its cruel **_twisted_** way – also did away with my family to make the choice _clear_. I wouldn’t put it past the game _not_ to meddle with things, after we played. It’s a thought that’s crossed my mind, _more_ than **_once_**.

“Why _us_?” I whisper, “Why did it have to pick **_us_** , Bethany? Why did it have to make _me_ feel like I am such a fucking **_asshole_**?” I lean in and steal a kiss from her.

She moans when I drag my hand over the course of her back, straight up her spine, and braces herself against my chest.

“I don’t know, Alex,” she admits, “But I know _one_ thing … I never want to give you up, even if that does mean we’re going to _hell_. I’ll _happily_ burn there with you.”

I plant a few kisses to her collarbone, then trace up her neck. It’s like I can’t stop feeling this _hunger_ for her. It’s been like this **_forever_**. At least it _feels_ like it has. It’s torture to be **_without_** her. Torture _not_ to **_kiss_** her – _just torture_.

 _All the time_.

Everything _about_ Bethany has me **_tortured_**.

“So, _what_ then? We just feel like **_this_** forever?” I grumble, in a second of misery.

She rocks her hips and grinds herself down on my lap. I moan and clamp my hands against her hips, steadying her – trying to **_stop_** her.

“Does _this_ feel bad, Alex? Does it feel bad when you’re **_inside_** of me?” she lifts my left hand, and drags her thumb over my gold wedding band. I lift her hand, and stare down at the diamond on her ring finger.

“You **_know_** it doesn’t …” I sigh out in hitch-y breaths.

“We’re **_married_** , now, Alex. We’re married and we have a _beautiful_ son, and there’s nothing _wrong_ with our love anymore … You don’t have to **_feel_** guilt anymore. Because I _don’t_. I **_never_** will,” she persists and I force a smile.

“It’s just hard to imagine what things would be like if they **_didn’t_** die … that’s _all_ ,” I manage to sigh out.

She kisses me again and I return the sentiment.

“I was _older_ than you once, and I loved you, _then_ , as a teenage boy, same as I love you in your forties as a **_man_** ,” she admits, loftily.

I laugh, then. She loves to reminds me of when she was older. It reminds us both how absurd, the jungles of Jumanji were. How the game _shaped_ us, both into the twisted mirror we are today.

“Yes, you _were_ older,” I agree, “but our **_souls_** are the same.”

She beams and nods her head, “Yes, Alex. _Exactly_. And I don’t care if you’re forty or one hundred – you’re **_mine_**. Your soul is mine and mine is _yours_. That’s _all_ that matters – all that I **_care_** about.”

She’s almost _twenty_ , now. But I don’t see her as so young. I see her soul – **_inside_**.

The guilt stems from the _death_ our love is **_mounted_** on.

But I don’t want to talk about it with her anymore. I want to _fall_ into her, instead.

I want to be _happy_ and I want to feel that guilt **_shy_** away. So, I _do_.

I kiss her and we shed off our clothes in a _wild_ frenzy of kisses and parts. I find my home inside of her and I don’t think about anything else again, tonight.

Not until my dreams come to remind me of Jumanji. Those little _nightmares_ that will never – **_never_** – _go away_.


End file.
